The asteroid in question, named Bennu, was the focus of a very dreamy NASA mission called OSIRIS-REx that launched in 2016. The first goal of OSIRIS-REx was to blast a spacecraft toward the ...

The document builds on the academies' decadal survey, outlining recommended missions for NASA's next New Frontiers program.

The OSIRIS-REx mission returned to the sample to Earth in September of 2023, and these studies show that it contains amino acids, nucleobases, and minerals known as evaporites—all elements of life’s ...

Scientists from NASA’s OSIRIS-REx asteroid sample return mission recently delivered remarkable findings about asteroid 101955 Bennu after the mission returned its samples to Earth in 2023.

The sample was collected from Bennu in October 2020 by a NASA mission called OSIRIS-REx, or Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification and Security-Regolith Explorer. It marked the ...

When you buy through links on our articles, Future and its syndication partners may earn a commission. While the odds of Bennu impacting Earth may sound alarming, they're not entirely unexpected ...

Rock and dust samples from the Bennu asteroid contain molecules that are the "key to life" on Earth, NASA officials announced on Wednesday.

The OSIRIS-REx spacecraft returned triumphantly to Earth in 2023 after collecting 4.3 ounces (121.6 grams) of precious grains of dust and rock from the asteroid Bennu in 2020. While that sample ...

When asteroids like Bennu hit the young Earth, they could have provided a complete package of complex molecules and the ingredients essential to life, such as water, phosphate, and ammonia. Together, ...

This mosaic image of asteroid Bennu is composed of 12 images taken by the OSIRIS-REx spacecraft from ... [+] a range of 15 miles. As wide as The Eiffel Tower is tall, the asteroid Bennu is a ...