Bennu was also an attractive target because it skirts the asteroid belt, which circles the sun between Mars and Jupiter. At its closest, the asteroid is 200 million miles from Earth. While still a ...

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. Now, astronomers are ...

An impact from Bennu would be very destructive, but Earth has seen worse. Around 66 million years ago, an asteroid that was roughly 6 miles wide (10 kilometers across) struck Earth, killing most ...

Asteroid Bennu seems to have come from a long-lost world on the fringes of the solar system, where saltwater pooled and dried over thousands of years and life’s basic ingredients were widespread.

T here’s certainly nothing living on the asteroid Bennu, an airless, 1,614-ft. rubble pile orbiting the sun about 40.2 million miles from Earth.But that doesn’t mean that Bennu hasn’t all at ...

In 2018, the OSIRIS-REx mission arrived at the near-Earth asteroid Bennu to collect pristine samples, untouched by alterations induced by Earth's atmosphere, to be analyzed on Earth.

Exploring mysteries of Asteroid Bennu Date: January 29, 2025 Source: DOE/Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory Summary: Scientists found that asteroid Bennu contained a set of salty mineral ...

Samples of matter returned from the asteroid Bennu support the theory that asteroids could have brought the building blocks of life to Earth, scientists report in a pair of new studies published ...

Scientists studying samples that NASA collected from the asteroid Bennu found a wide assortment of organic molecules that shed light on how life arose. By Carl Zimmer Our solar system contains ...

An early analysis of a sample collected from the asteroid Bennu suggests that the space rock had an unexpectedly water-rich past — and it may have even splintered off from an ancient ocean world ...

In October 2020, NASA’s OSIRIS-REx spacecraft touched down on Bennu and collected a sample of surface material, stowing it in a capsule that the spacecraft returned to the Utah desert Sept. 24 ...

NASA's spacecraft OSIRIS-REx reached asteroid Bennu on Dec. 3, 2018. After surveying Bennu, NASA plans to collect samples and send them back to Earth.