Bennu is also expected to pass closer to Earth than the moon in 2135 and if it does, our planet's gravitational pull could put it on the path to striking Earth on September 24, 2182.

In 2018, NASA’s OSIRIS-REx mission reached asteroid 101955 Bennu. Two years later, the spacecraft snagged a sample of its surface, which has since been returned to Earth. Now, astronomers are ...

A sample from asteroid Bennu contains organic compounds usually found at midocean ridges on Earth, suggesting Bennu may have been part of an ancient ocean world.

NASA mission to asteroid returning to Earth with a sample 05:53. A small saucer-shape capsule carrying a half-pound of rocks and dust collected from an asteroid called Bennu — leftovers from the ...

"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.

The CI chondrites and asteroid Bennu. To learn about an asteroid – a rocky or metallic object in orbit around the Sun – we started with a study of meteorites.. Asteroids like Bennu are rocky ...

The mission, which launched on Sept. 8, 2016, targeting the primordial asteroid Bennu, believed to have remained largely unchanged since the solar system's formation 4.6 billion years ago.

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 ...

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 ...

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 ...

It took two years for NASA's OSIRIS-REx space probe to return from asteroid Bennu before dropping off a small capsule as it flew past Earth, which was then recovered in the desert of the U.S ...

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 ...