REx mission is scheduled to return samples of Asteroid Bennu to Earth. Credit: NASA Goddard Space Flight Center ...

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 ...

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 ...

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 ...

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.

Bennu’s parent asteroid likely broke apart 1 to 2 billion years ago, and some of the fragments came together to form the rubble pile we know as Bennu. These minerals are also found on icy bodies ...

Bennu is both an old and a new asteroid. Like all of the millions of other objects in the asteroid belt, it formed 4.5 billion years ago when our solar system was just accreting.

Scientists have detected organic compounds and minerals necessary for life in the samples collected by the OSIRIS-REx mission from a near-Earth asteroid named Bennu.

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.

An evaporite sequence from ancient brine recorded in Bennu samples. Nature, 2025; 637 (8048): 1072 DOI: 10.1038/s41586-024-08495-6 ...

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.

OSIRIS-REx circled the asteroid for 22 months to search for a landing spot, touching down to collect a 2-ounce (60 grams) sample from Bennu's surface that could contain the extraterrestrial ...