The asteroid Bennu is one of the most likely objects to collide with Earth – and a time capsule from the Solar System's early days. Nasa's Osiris-Rex mission has captured it in never-before-seen ...

OSIRIS-REx spent 2 1/2 years studying the 1,722-foot-wide (525 meters) Bennu between December 2018 and May 2021. During that time, the probe took thousands of images of the asteroid and its surface.

Bennu was first discovered by telescope in 1999. Six years later, it was chosen as a candidate for a Nasa mission to recover asteroid samples and return them to Earth for detailed study.

When the OSIRIS-REx spacecraft closely approached Bennu three years ago, it extended a Touch-and-Go Sample Acquisition Mechanism head, or TAGSAM, toward the asteroid and fired a blast of nitrogen gas.

NASA's OSIRIS-REx dropped off the Bennu asteroid sample last month. ... A 3D computer model of one of the particles showed it contained a large amount of carbon and evidence of water.

Asteroid Bennu presented NASA’s OSIRIS-REx team with unexpected challenges, making it one of the trickiest missions to date. Discover how NASA’s mission planners adapted and what secrets Bennu ...

A 1.4-inch-wide (3.5 centimeters), 0.23-ounce (6.6 grams) rock is "by far our largest booty from the surface of Bennu," he said, gesturing toward fresh 3D scans of the rock taken at the curation ...

The asteroid Bennu could one day collide with Earth – and is a time capsule from the Solar System's early days. Nasa's Osiris-Rex mission has captured it in stunning detail.

The sample, collected from the 4.5 billion-year-old near-Earth asteroid Bennu in October 2020 by NASA’s OSIRIS-REx mission, arrived on Earth in a capsule on September 24, dropping from the ...