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.

The first compound the team discovered in the Bennu sample was sodium carbonate, which had never been observed before in any other asteroid or meteorite. As it incorporates water into its crystal ...

NASA OSIRIS-REx sample collection event at Asteroid Bennu saw the spacecraft plunge its arm into the surface. Find out how ...

Nearly 60 years later, NASA’s OSIRIS-REx mission returned from space with a sample of an asteroid named Bennu, similar to the one that rained rocks over Revelstoke. Our research team has ...

“So far we have not seen any evidence for a preferred chirality,” Glavin says. This goes for both the Bennu sample and a previous sample from the asteroid 162173 Ryugu, collected by Japan’s Hayabusa2 ...

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 ...

“We are still at the very early stages of the analysis of the Bennu samples,” Glavin says. His team is currently examining a much larger sample from the asteroid that weighs around six grams ...

A portion of the asteroid Bennu sample delivered to Earth by NASA’s OSIRIS-REx mission, set into a microscope slide at the agency’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. Credit: Molly ...

Now, back on Earth, the sample from asteroid Bennu has already delivered surprising findings about the early solar system and where the asteroid might have come from. After a seven-year journey ...

The robotic Tianwen-2 spacecraft will collect samples from Kamoʻoalewa, which some scientists suspect is a fragment of the moon.