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 ...

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

Astronomers estimate that an asteroid this large comes this close to Earth only about once every 7,500 years. It also appears ...

This asteroid is one of the most likely to hit Earth. Here’s what it means for our future. New ultraprecise measurements show that the asteroid Bennu has a higher chance than thought of ...

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 ...

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 ...

Bennu is classed as a near-Earth asteroid, meaning that it makes its closest approach to Earth every six years at around 186,000 miles. fairness meter. fairness meter.

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 ...

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.

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 ...

Earth lives in a shooting gallery, with small and large rocky bodies in abundance in our solar system. Are we in danger of ...

It took a while for scientists to gain access to the samples that NASA’s OSIRIS-REx mission took from the asteroid Bennu, but the wait is proving to be worth it. A new study published January 29 ...