Bennu’s near-Earth orbit and carbon-rich makeup have made it a target of scientific interest. It has been theorized that this ...

NASA’s mission, in a way, is already in progress. The agency’s OSIRIS-REx mission—having successfully visited the asteroid Bennu in 2020 and returning a sample three years later—has now ...

Water-rich meteorites contain key ingredients for life, yet they barely appear in meteorite collections. Recent research ...

A new study suggests Bennu may have formed beyond Saturn’s orbit, carrying materials from the coldest regions of the solar system. Berkeley Lab plans further infrared and X-ray analysis of Bennu ...

Recent papers published in Nature and Nature Astronomy found life’s building blocks on a near-Earth asteroid named Bennu.

Scientists have found special chemical compounds necessary for the existence of life in samples collected from asteroid Bennu. They believe the asteroid is a plant-like object rich in water and ...

Brand new research has produced a better estimate of its size and orbit ... The asteroid is likely fully solid, and not a rubble pile like the large asteroids Bennu and Ryugu.

Late last year, NASA announced it had selected sites to grab samples from the asteroid Bennu. The OSIRIS-REx mission was launched in September 2016, and, after a journey of two years, it began ...

New modeling indicates the main belt asteroid (52246) Donaldjohanson may have formed about 150 million years ago when a larger parent asteroid broke apart; its orbit and spin properties have ...

Carbonaceous near-Earth asteroid Bennu as seen from NASA’s OSIRIS-REx ... likely gets broken down through heat stress when its orbit takes it close to the Sun. As carbonaceous chondrites orbit ...

So, the OSIRIS‑REx mission ventured to the asteroid Bennu to retrieve an unaltered ... likely gets broken down through heat stress when its orbit takes it close to the sun.