TUCSON, Ariz. (KVOA) — Dryland farming is a popular method for areas where water is expensive or where people rely on crops grown in winter and don t need artificial irrigation.
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On October 20, an uncrewed spacecraft roughly the size of a Sprinter van and traveling at the glacial pace of 10 centimeters per second collided with an asteroid 200 million miles from Earth.
The OSIRIS-REx craft’s proboscis-like “Touch-and-Go Sample Acquisition Mechanism” (Tagsam), an 11-foot-long shock absorber tipped by a round vacuum head and a collection canister, touched down atop a boulder on the asteroid Bennu’s surface and appeared to smash right through it. Several seconds after impact, the arm had punched more than a foot and a half into the asteroid. It would have kept going too, but for the programmed sequence that burst the arm’s nitrogen gas canister, tripped its vacuum suction, and milliseconds later fired the spacecraft’s reverse thrusters to initiate a hyperbolic escape trajectory. After 17 years and $800 million in funding, the crux of OSIRIS-REx’s smash-and-grab mission was over in