Five science instruments mapped Bennu's chemistry and mineralogy to determine the effect of sunlight on the asteroid's orbit. Cost of the mission, excluding launch, is $800 million.

The asteroid will make its next closest approach to Earth in 2135. While Bennu won't come close enough to pose a threat to Earth then, knowing its exact trajectory can help scientists better ...

Bennu is a 1,600-foot-wide near-Earth asteroid that was discovered in 1999 by the Lincoln Near-Earth Asteroid Research (LINEAR) Project. It passes by Earth approximately every 6 years.

Though the asteroid will make a close approach to Earth in 2135, it won’t yet pose any danger to us. However, in the far future of the year 2300, there is a 1 in 1,1750 chance that the asteroid ...

Here’s how it works. The near-Earth asteroid Bennu continues to reveal its secrets to NASA's OSIRIS-REx mission, which has been orbiting the space rock for nearly two years.

Nearly 60 years later, NASA’s OSIRIS-REx mission returned from space with a sample of an asteroid named Bennu, similar to the one that rained rocks over Revelstoke. Our research team has ...

The mission will be launched toward Bennu in late 2016, arrive at the asteroid in 2018, and return a sample of Bennu’s surface to Earth in 2023.

Yesterday, NASA’s OSIRIS-REx spacecraft passed by the asteroid Bennu for the last time, ending its two-and-a-half-year relationship with the space rock. But OSIRIS-REx is still lingering in the ...

Bennu isn’t the only asteroid that’s been caught blasting material out into space, but it joins a very exclusive club. Of the 8,000 asteroids discovered to date, only 12 have been classified ...

Asteroid Bennu might just be one of, if not the most studied space rocks in the history of mankind. And NASA has released a slew of brand-new, interesting information about it recently.

Bennu may or may not be coming our way, but if it is, we’ve got plenty of time to prepare our hello. Correction: An earlier version of this story misstated the impact of a collision by asteroid ...