Dante Loretta

It looks like we're catching up to it, but actually it's on a different plane than we are.

It's below us at this point.

And so just last month, on September 22nd, we did this maneuver we called our Earth Gravity Assist, where we timed it to within one second, our flyby of the Earth flew underneath Antarctica, used the gravity of our planet to change the plane that the spacecraft was orbiting on to match that of the asteroid.

And then that set us up for a rendezvous, which we will see Bennu starting in August of next year.

So this just shows you what's about, we're about right there right now.

And so in August we get our first view of the asteroid and then in November we'll be in the proximity of Bennu and the real adventure will begin, which is right about there.

Okay, so during Earth Gravity Assist, we were able to use our science instruments, including those awesome cameras that we built at the University of Arizona to get some pictures of our home world.

Here, this is right after we flew under Antarctica.

We immediately turned around and started collecting data.

This is the color images from our map cam.

It's actually three images, one in red, one in green, one in blue filters.

And then we stack them together to get this awesome picture.

I really love this view of our planet because it's not one that people look at very often.

And I always try to imagine that if you were an alien and you sent a space probe to view the earth and you just did a flyby and you took this picture, you would really have no idea that there were humans living on this and that there was actually land.

I mean you see a little bit of Australia down here and you see Asia over here and then actually there is Baja and right there is Tucson, Arizona.

So you were in Tucson on September 22nd, 2017 and you are in this picture.

And here we got a shot of the moon.

Also a view that very, very few people ever see because this is the near side of the moon here.

The Earth would be over here in this field of view.

And so you're used to seeing those mare, the man on the moon kind of things.