On Sunday, NASA’s OSIRIS-Rex mission will deliver a sample it collected from asteroid Bennu, completing a seven-year journey that could provide insights into how life originated on Earth.

The sample, collected from the 4.5 billion-year-old near-Earth asteroid Bennu in October 2020 by NASA’s OSIRIS-REx mission, arrived on Earth in a capsule on September 24, dropping from the ...

Bennu, the asteroid from which OSIRIS-REx collected its sample, is thought to be made up of material that is around 4.5 billion years old, making it a potential time capsule from the earliest ...

Bennu asteroid sample: OSIRIS-REx mission timeline. A timeline of significant events: Sept. 8, 2016: Launch. OSIRIS-REx was carried into space atop an Atlas V rocket from Cape Canaveral, Florida.

A few ounces of rock and dust retrieved from the distant asteroid Bennu show evidence of the ... OSIRIS-REx begins orbiting Bennu. Oct. 20, 2020: Sample collected from Bennu. April 7, 2021 ...

After a seven-year journey to asteroid Bennu and back, NASA’s OSIRIS-REx spacecraft dropped off its sample of rocks and dirt collected from the primitive asteroid last year in the desert of Utah.

A sample from asteroid Bennu contains organic compounds usually found at midocean ridges on Earth, suggesting Bennu may have been part of an ancient ocean world.

Known in acronymic astro-speak as OSIRIS-REx, that seven-year-long voyage brought home the goods via a sample return canister that came to full stop on Sept. 24, 2023, parachuting into a remote ...

SEE THE ASTEROID SAMPLE A NASA SPACECRAFT TOOK 7 YEARS TO BRING BACK TO EARTH. Scientists with NASA's OSIRIS-REx Sample Analysis Team published their early findings on the Bennu sample.

Bennu is a roughly 0.3-mile-wide (500 meters) asteroid that orbits in near-Earth space. Scientists suspect it’s a chunk of a larger asteroid that broke off due to a collision farther out.