The asteroid appeared as a speck of light to the spacecraft’s UA-built PolyCam camera, but Bennu will seem to grow now that OSIRIS-REx has begun the approach phase of the mission.

The team focused on periods when researchers knew OSIRIS-REx’s position relative to Bennu to within a meter (3.3 feet), based on images the spacecraft was taking of the asteroid’s surface.

FILE - In this image from video released by NASA, the Osiris-Rex spacecraft touches the surface of asteroid Bennu on Tuesday, Oct. 20, 2020.

A series of images from NASA’s OSIRIS-REx mission show the spacecraft approach and touch down on asteroid Bennu’s surface, over 200 million miles away from Earth, to collect a sample on ...

Bennu, one of the most dangerous near-Earth objects, has been meticulously tracked by optical and radar astrometric data since it was discovered in 1999. As the destination for the OSIRIS-REx asteroid ...

In 2018, it arrived at Bennu, a near-Earth asteroid as wide as the Sears Tower is tall. The mission collected pieces of the asteroid and brought them back to Earth in 2023.

NASA OSIRIS-REx sample collection event at Asteroid Bennu saw the spacecraft plunge its arm into the surface. Find out how deep it went. Credit: NASA Goddard Space Flight Center ...

New research by a University of Arizona-led team suggests two near-Earth asteroids — but Bennu and Ryugu — were actually sheared off and shaped by a by a single crash.

This image of asteroid Bennu was captured on Jun. 13, 2019, shortly after NASA’s OSIRIS-REx spacecraft executed its second orbital insertion maneuver.

Because this asteroid will zoom by Earth in 2029, a detailed study of its trajectory will deliver even further restrictions on the fifth force than what Bennu could provide.