101955 Bennu (provisional designation 1999 RQ36) is a carbonaceous asteroid in the Apollo group discovered by the LINEAR Project on 11 September 1999. It is a potentially hazardous object that is listed on the Sentry Risk Table and has the third highest cumulative rating on the Palermo Technical Impact Hazard Scale. [9]

Dec 20, 2024 · Bennu is a carbon-rich asteroid that is about one-third of a mile (half a kilometer) wide at its equator. An ancient relic of our solar system’s early days, asteroid Bennu has seen more than 4.5 billion years of history.

Dec 17, 2024 · Bennu is a relatively small asteroid that passes close to Earth about every six years. Bennu was the target of NASA’s first asteroid sample return mission, OSIRIS-REx. The spacecraft delivered a sample of Bennu to Earth on Sept. 24, 2023.

Oct 16, 2020 · Bennu is a carbonaceous asteroid that hasn’t undergone drastic, composition-altering change, meaning that on and below its deeper-than-pitch-black surface are chemicals and rocks from the birth of the solar system.

Nov 21, 2024 · Bennu was the target of NASA’s first asteroid sample return mission – OSIRIS-REx. The spacecraft successfully delivered the sample to Earth on Sept. 24, 2023. Scientists first caught sight of Bennu on Sept. 11, 1999, with a one-meter telescope near Socorro, New Mexico, during the Lincoln Laboratory Near Earth Research (LINEAR) survey.

101955 Bennu is a C-type asteroid in the Apollo group discovered by the LINEAR Project on 11 September 1999. It is a potentially hazardous asteroid (PHA), that has an orbit semi-major axis distance of 1.1264 AU.

1 day ago · Rocks and dust from the asteroid Bennu contain some of the molecular building blocks of life on Earth, such as amino acids and nucleobases. They also carry ammonia that formed billions of years ...

Mar 19, 2019 · Observations of asteroid (101955) Bennu with NASA’s OSIRIS-REx spacecraft reveal an unexpected surficial diversity that poses a challenge to the success of the sample-return mission.

Here we consider early OSIRIS-REx observations of Bennu to understand how the asteroid’s properties compare to pre-encounter expectations and to assess the prospects for sample return. The bulk composition of Bennu appears to be hydrated and volatile-rich, as expected.

1 day ago · Scientists studying samples that NASA collected from the asteroid Bennu found a wide assortment of organic molecules that shed light on how life arose.