OSIRIS-REx found that Bennu’s surface was far rougher than thought, and mission controllers spent years finding a spot on Bennu’s where the spacecraft could quickly touchdown and gather samples.

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 ...

Bennu’s rocks formed 4.5 billion years ago on a larger parent asteroid. That asteroid was wet and muddy. Under the surface, pockets of water perhaps only a few feet across were evaporating ...

Two new studies examining these extraterrestrial space grains found signs of life’s molecules preserved on the asteroid’s ancient surface. Dust and rocks from Bennu contained all five ...

If you were able to instantly (and safely) transport Bennu from space to the surface of Earth, it would collapse into a giant heap. Thus, Bennu is often referred to as a 'rubble pile' asteroid.

cold temperature and decreased precipitation at the surface." Senior author of the study Axel Timmermann said: "The likelihood that a Bennu-sized asteroid will strike Earth is quite small at 0.037 ...

Scientists have confirmed the presence of organic molecules on the surface of the near-Earth asteroid Bennu, opening the door to the possibility that life on Earth arose from cosmic origins.

A Bennu-type asteroid could lead to “severe environmental consequences,” researchers write, while acknowledging that a collision is not likely.

While the odds of Bennu impacting Earth may sound alarming, they're not entirely unexpected. "On average, medium-sized asteroids collide with Earth about every 100–200 thousand years.

Analysing returned samples Tim McCoy (right), curator of meteorites at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History, and research geologist Cari Corrigan examine scanning electron microscope ...