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.

Mar 19, 2019 · This image shows a view across asteroid Bennu’s southern hemisphere and into space, and it demonstrates the number and distribution of boulders across Bennu’s surface. The image was obtained on Mar. 7 by the PolyCam camera on NASA’s OSIRIS-REx spacecraft from a distance of about 3 miles (5 km).

The OSIRIS-REx mission is supported by NASA under Contract NNM10AA11C issued through the New Frontiers Program.

Feb 9, 2023 · This global map of asteroid Bennu’s surface is a mosaic of images collected by NASA’s OSIRIS-REx spacecraft between Mar. 7 and Apr. 19, 2019. A total of 2,155 PolyCam images were stitched together and corrected to produce the mosaic.

The spacecraft collected these images at distances ranging from 1.9 to 3.1 miles (3.1 to 5 km) above the asteroid’s surface. This detailed view of Bennu was used by the mission team during their selection of the primary and backup sample collection sites – Nightingale and Osprey.

Jan 24, 2025 · The Bennu samples exhibit an equal abundance of left-handed and right-handed amino acids, like the mirror images of L and D-serine pictured here. This means that early Earth may have started out with equal abundances as well, before life developed a left-handed biology.

Nov 21, 2024 · This series of images taken by the OSIRIS-REx spacecraft shows asteroid Bennu in one full rotation from about 50 miles (80 km). The spacecraft’s PolyCam camera obtained the thirty-six 2.2-millisecond frames over a period of four hours and 18 minutes.

Oct 8, 2020 · When NASA’s OSIRIS-REx spacecraft arrived at asteroid Bennu in December 2018, its close-up images confirmed what mission planners had predicted nearly two decades before: Bennu is made of loose material weakly clumped together by gravity, and shaped like a …

Apr 5, 2019 · This image shows four views of asteroid Bennu along with a corresponding global mosaic. The images were taken on Dec. 2, 2018, by the OSIRIS-REx spacecraft’s PolyCam camera.

Dec 2, 2018 · This mosaic of images shows Bennu’s entire surface as the asteroid rotates. This data was collected as OSIRIS-REx approached Bennu using the spacecraft’s long-range PolyCam imager.