In May 2021, OSIRIS-REx began its journey back to Earth carrying dust from Bennu - a rubble-pile asteroid older than Earth itself. When the capsule was opened in 2023, scientists were stunned by the ...

Our solar system is filled with rocky debris tumbling around the sun, most of which is the same age, but the asteroid Bennu ...

On Sept. 8, 2016, the Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification, and Security – Regolith Explorer (OSIRIS-REx) mission launched from Cape Canaveral, setting off on its 4.4-billion-mile ...

Tom Zega, a University of Arizona scientist who's worked on samples brought back from the asteroid Bennu, tells The Show more ...

NASA’s OSIRIS-REx spacecraft collected Bennu’s samples in 2020 during a swift touch-and-go. The material contains ancient stardust, interstellar organic matter, and minerals formed from melted ice ...

One of the studies, published in the journal Nature Astronomy, shows that ice inside the parent asteroid melted and reacted ...

Three publications by the UA-led OSIRIS-REx sample analysis team reveal the asteroid's composition and history in unprecedented detail. (Nanowerk News) Asteroid Bennu — the target of NASA's OSIRIS-REx ...

Since its discovery in 1999, the near-Earth asteroid Bennu has captivated scientists as a time capsule from the early solar system — and also as a key to possibly understanding the origins of life.

New research on a sample collected from the asteroid Bennu — a small portion of which should arrive in Canada soon — is ...

OSIRIS-REx reveals gray asteroids reflect red or blue light differently due to sulfide minerals, offering clues to rocky body evolution in the solar system. It also enables future research. By having ...

"Bennu is a time capsule of the material that was throughout the solar system." Scientists studying samples from the asteroid Bennu have found that it contains a remarkable mix of materials — some of ...

On September 3, scientists studying samples from the Bennu asteroid have discovered a variety of unusual materials, some of which existed even before the formation of the Sun. Three recent papers ...