NASA Planetary Scientist Noah Petro dishes on what it took plan the impressive touch-and-go return mission, why much of the sample will be preserved for future generations of humanity, the best-case ...

NASA OSIRIS-REx sample collection event at Asteroid Bennu saw the spacecraft plunge its arm into the surface. Find out how ...

An external view of the OSIRIS-REx sample-collector hardware shows material from the carbon-rich asteroid scattered across the right side. NASA/Erika Blumenfeld & Joseph Aebersold You talk about the ...

Asteroids are usually grouped into three main types based on what they are made of: C-type, S-type and M-type.

A series of images from NASA’s OSIRIS-REx mission show the spacecraft approach and touch down on asteroid Bennu’s surface, over 200 million miles away from Earth, to collect a sample on ...

Earth lives in a shooting gallery, with small and large rocky bodies in abundance in our solar system. Are we in danger of ...

The team focused on periods when researchers knew OSIRIS-REx’s position relative to Bennu to within a meter (3.3 feet), based on images the spacecraft was taking of the asteroid’s surface.

Astronomers estimate that an asteroid this large comes this close to Earth only about once every 7,500 years. It also appears ...

In the week since its “perfect” launch , the OSIRIS-REx robotic spacecraft continues to behave as it cruises to its rendezvous with the asteroid Bennu. The spacecraft will arrive at Bennu in ...

Tuesday marked the first attempt OSIRIS-REx made to retrieve a sample from an asteroid on the outer reaches of the solar system named Bennu. If successful, this will be NASA's largest sample from ...

OSIRIS-REx will scoop a sample of the asteroid in July 2020. It will return to Earth and eject the Sample Return Capsule for landing in the Utah desert in September 2023. Contact Mikayla Mace at ...

The Field Museum is the new temporary home to a tiny piece of pristine asteroid. The fragment of the asteroid Bennu, on loan from NASA, won't be on display for visitors, but will give scientists the ...