NASA's OSIRIS-REx spacecraft is aiming to finish a mission to explore the surface of Bennu, a skyscraper-sized asteroid around 320 million kilometers from Earth, gather samples, and return them to Earth.
Bennu is a carbonaceous asteroid identified by the LINEAR Project on September 11, 1999. It is a potentially dangerous object on the Sentry Risk Table with the largest average score on the Palermo Technical Impact Hazard Scale. It has a 1-in-1,800 probability of colliding with Earth between 2178 and 2290, with the greatest danger on September 24, 2182. It is called after the ancient Egyptian legendary bird Bennu, which is connected with the Sun, birth, and renewal.
The OSIRIS-REx mission, which is scheduled to return specimens to Earth in 2023 for additional research, was designed with Bennu in mind. After a two-year trip, the OSIRIS-REx spacecraft landed at Bennu on December 3, 2018. It circled the asteroid and meticulously scanned Bennu's surface in search of prospective sample collecting sites. The orbital analysis enabled the estimate of Bennu's size and dispersion.
