Daring Asteroid Mission to Take a Bite of Bennu Oct. 20
Bennu is a small, diamond-shaped asteroid with carbon and water-rich rocks related to carbonaceous meteorites that have landed on the Earth. NASA will gather the first Bennu sample this month and return the material to Earth for analysis in 2023. NASA/Goddard/Univ. of Arizona A new month brings fresh excitement. On Oct. 20, NASA's OSIRIS-REx spacecraft will attempt to grab its first sample of dust and rock from the asteroid Bennu in a daring touch-and-go maneuver. If you're not familiar with Bennu it's a tiny, carbon-rich asteroid just 1,610 feet across (490 meters) currently located 201 million miles from Earth. Its orbit passes close enough to our planet astronomers classify it as potentially hazardous object with a cumulative 1-in-2,700 chance of impacting Earth between 2175 and 2199. These are two examples of CM2 carbonaceous (carbon-rich) meteorites found on Earth: Jbilet Winselwanfrom Western Sahara, and Aguas Zarcas, which fell in Costa Rica on April 23, ...