Bennu is also expected to pass closer to Earth than the moon in 2135 and if it does, our planet's gravitational pull could put it on the path to striking Earth on September 24, 2182.

Bennu’s parent body formed 4.5 billion years ago and once contained pockets of liquid water. As the water evaporated, brines ...

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 ...

Despite the slightly higher chance of impact, the risks from Bennu shouldn’t keep anyone awake at night. There’s more than a 99.9 percent chance that Bennu will not hit Earth in the next three ...

The mission, which launched on Sept. 8, 2016, targeting the primordial asteroid Bennu, believed to have remained largely unchanged since the solar system's formation 4.6 billion years ago.

The CI chondrites and asteroid Bennu. To learn about an asteroid – a rocky or metallic object in orbit around the Sun – we started with a study of meteorites.. Asteroids like Bennu are rocky ...

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.

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 ...

NASA’s OSIRIS-REx mission returned samples from asteroid Bennu, which showed discoveries about life and the early solar system. These findings can now provide information into the potential ...

Bennu — a rubble pile just one-third of a mile (one-half of a kilometer) across — was originally part of a much larger asteroid that got clobbered by other space rocks.

The rocky object called Bennu is classified as a near-Earth asteroid, currently making its closest approach to Earth every six years at about 186,000 miles (299,000 km) away. It might come even ...

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.