101955 Bennu (provisional designation 1999 RQ36) is a carbonaceous asteroid in the Apollo group discovered by the LINEAR Project on 11 September 1999. It is a potentially hazardous object that is …

May 12, 2025 · Bennu is a relatively small asteroid that passes close to Earth about every six years. Bennu was the target of NASA's OSIRIS-REx, the first U.S. mission to collect a sample from an …

Feb 10, 2025 · Now, astronomers are getting to know Bennu like never before — and a new study looks at how it could wreck us.

Bennu’s parent asteroid likely broke apart 1 to 2 billion years ago, and some of the fragments came together to form the rubble pile we know as Bennu. These minerals are also found on icy bodies in …

Aug 25, 2025 · The near-Earth asteroid Bennu contains stardust that is older than the solar system and clues about its violent history, three new studies of the asteroid's sample materials show.

When scientists cracked open the first grains from asteroid Bennu, they expected a time capsule of rock and dust. What they found instead was a cocktail of sugars, phosphates, evaporite salts, and ...

Oct 16, 2020 · Bennu is a primordial artifact preserved in the vacuum of space, orbiting among planets and moons and asteroids and comets. Because it is so old, Bennu could be made of material …

Jan 5, 2026 · Bennu and a handful of special asteroids like it are ancient objects, leftovers from the very earliest moments of planet formation in our solar system.

Bennu (/ ˈbɛnuː /) [1] is an ancient Egyptian deity linked with the Sun, creation, and rebirth. He may have been the original inspiration for the phoenix legends that developed in Greek mythology.

The curation team will be among the first to see and handle the sample OSIRIS-REx is returning from asteroid Bennu. They are also responsible for storing and distributing the sample to science team …