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.

Rock and dust samples retrieved by NASA from the asteroid Bennu exhibit some of the chemical building blocks of life, according to research that provides some of the best evidence to date that such ...

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 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 ...

Bennu was the target for NASA's OSIRIS-REx asteroid sampling mission, which touched down briefly on the space rock in October 2020 to gather over 4 ounces of material, and then brought that sample ...

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

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 ...

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, ...

The Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum will award its 2025 Michael Collins Trophy to Margaret Hamilton for Lifetime Achievement and the OSIRIS-REx Team for Current Achievement. These annual ...

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 ...