In 2016, NASA embarked on a new and unique mission: sending the Osiris-REx spacecraft to rendezvous with the asteroid Bennu to study the rocky space object and collect samples to return to ...

Scientists from NASA’s OSIRIS-REx asteroid sample return mission recently delivered remarkable findings about asteroid 101955 Bennu after the mission returned its samples to Earth in 2023.

Bennu is just over ⅓ mile, or 560 meters, in diameter. And while we know about the devastating effects of a larger asteroid (just ask the dinosaurs) and the regional effects of a much smaller ...

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.

September of 2023 was an exciting month for space exploration when OSIRIS-REx finally returned to Earth, dropping off the samples it had collected from the potentially hazardous asteroid Bennu.

NASA’s OSIRIS-REx set out to collect a pristine sample from asteroid Bennu, a cosmic time capsule that may hold clues to the origins of life in our solar system. But the journey was anything but easy.

A sample from the near-Earth asteroid Bennu has been found to contain an abundance of water and carbon, reinforcing the theory that life on Earth was seeded from outer space. Just two weeks after ...

In January 2025, scientists announced the discovery of organic molecules— the building blocks of life— in samples retrieved from a distant asteroid named Bennu. What can this discovery reveal ...

NASA’s Osiris-Rex spacecraft returned 122 grams (4 ounces) of dust and pebbles from the near-Earth asteroid Bennu, delivering the sample canister to the Utah desert in 2023 before swooping off after ...

A capsule carrying precious samples from asteroid Bennu landed on Earth on Sunday. Nasa scientists hope the material could give hints to how life here began. BBC Science editor Rebecca Morelle ...

Climatic and ecological consequences Responses to dust injections of 400 million tonnes from a Bennu-type asteroid impact: spatial changes in surface temperature, total precipitation, percentage ...