How Bennu could hit the Earth Bennu, categorized as a Near-Earth Object (NEO), could pass through a "gravitational keyhole" in the year 2182, causing it to collide with Earth, said NASA.

"Asteroid Bennu may be a fragment of an ancient ocean world. That's still highly speculative. But it's the best lead I have right now to explain the origin of that material," Lauretta said.

Bennu comes close to Earth once every six years, and orbits at an average speed of around 63,000 miles per hour. It takes about 1.2 years to fully orbit the sun and rotates once every 4.3 hours ...

The return capsule containing a sample collected from the asteroid Bennu in October 2020 by NASA’s OSIRIS-REx spacecraft is seen shortly after touching down in the desert at the Department of ...

To reach Bennu, which orbits in a plane tilted six degrees from Earth's, OSIRIS-REx looped around the sun and then made a velocity-boosting gravity-assist flyby of Earth on Sept. 22, 2017.

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 ...

An early analysis of a sample collected from the asteroid Bennu suggests that the space rock had an unexpectedly water-rich past — and it may have even splintered off from an ancient ocean world ...

OSIRIS-REx later arrived at the asteroid in late December 2018 after surveying for a few years the spacecraft prepared to descend to Bennu's surface. After collecting samples in October 2020, the ...

The most worrisome day would be Sept. 24, 2182, but there would be only a 0.037 percent chance of its being a bad day. Bennu is about a third of a mile, or half a kilometer, wide. That is not ...

Specifically, it has a 1-in-2,700 chance (that’s just 0.037 percent) of hitting Earth in 2182. Bennu is just over ⅓ mile, or 560 meters, in diameter.

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 is much stranger than researchers previously thought. When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission. Here’s how it works. When the OSIRIS-REx ...