Bennu was discovered in 1999 and is believed to be part of a larger asteroid that collided with another space rock. It’s about one-third of a mile wide and is roughly the height of the Empire ...

By traveling to Bennu, NASA researchers reasoned, a probe could gather pristine material. The OSIRIS-REx probe arrived at the 1,850-foot-wide asteroid in 2020, scooped up rock and dirt, and then ...

The spacecraft reached Bennu in 2018 after traveling 320 million kilometers from Earth. It spent two years mapping its surface, then collected a 120g sample before landing back on Earth in 2023.

In 2023, NASA’s OSIRIS-REx mission returned from space with a sample of an asteroid named Bennu and scientists got to dive into a tale of rock, ice and water that hints at how life could have ...

They’re the building rocks of life. Analysis of debris from the nearly 5 billion-year-old asteroid Bennu suggests the ingredients to life on Earth were present in the early days of our solar ...

An artist’s impression of OSIRIS-REx digging into Bennu. Image: NASA. The OSIRIS-REx team collected more than twice the amount of asteroid material they had initially hoped to gather (4.29 ...

A big question in the origin of life on Earth is why it is based solely on "left-handed" amino acids. Studies on asteroid Bennu's chemical building blocks deepens the mystery. Credit: Christoph ...

Asteroid Bennu is a primordial goldmine of secrets. A relic from our early solar system, it may hold molecular precursors to the origin of life. Bennu's orbit takes it close to the Earth every six ...

The asteroid Bennu is puzzling scientists, with samples from the space rock showing weirder properties than they expected. These include extremely high nitrogen levels and improbably magnetic ...

In 2018, NASA’s OSIRIS-REx mission reached asteroid 101955 Bennu. Two years later, the spacecraft snagged a sample of its surface, which has since been returned to Earth.

Unique asteroid sample lands at the Field Museum 02:03. The Field Museum is the new temporary home to a tiny piece of pristine asteroid. The fragment of the asteroid Bennu, on loan from NASA, won ...