First discovered in 1999, Bennu, the near-Earth asteroid, could possibly drift into the planet's orbit and could hit the planet by September 2182, according to the OSIRIS-REx science team.

Experts say that Bennu – at half a kilometre wide – is significantly smaller than the 10-kilometer asteroid that struck Earth 66 million years ago and killed the dinosaurs.

On September 24, 2182, a relatively large space rock has a 0.037% chance of crashing onto the surface of Earth. Although the chances of impact are slim, Bennu is still one of the most potentially ...

An illustration of asteroid Bennu. NASA/JPL-Caltech On September 24, 2182, a relatively large space rock has a 0.037% chance of crashing onto the surface of Earth.

Pristine samples of asteroid Bennu have revealed something entirely unexpected — not only does the asteroid contain the chemical building blocks of life, but it also originated from an ancient ...

Evaporites—the legacy of an ancient brine Ever since the Bennu samples returned to Earth on September 24, 2023, we and our colleagues on four continents have spent hundreds of hours studying them.

An asteroid carrying some of the basic building blocks of life has been reported in the journal Nature Astronomy. This finding opens the possibility that life on Earth could have been seeded by ...

Asteroids are valuable celestial bodies, rich in diverse elements that make them attractive targets for space exploration and ...

On September 24, 2023, NASA's OSIRIS-REx spacecraft dropped a capsule to Earth containing pristine carbonaceous regolith collected from the near-Earth asteroid Bennu.

OSIRIS-REx launched from Earth on September 8, 2016, carrying six instruments designed to map the asteroid, document the sample site, and make other observations of Bennu.

Bennu is unlikely to strike Earth — at least in the near future — but its rubble pile nature would make other future space endeavors like asteroid mining difficult.

On September 24, 2023, the agency received roughly 2.5 ounces of rocks and dust collected from a 4.5 billion year-old near-Earth asteroid named Bennu. The regolith was dropped off by OSIRIS-REx in ...