This combination of rock, water and organics is one reason OSIRIS-REx chose to sample the organic-rich asteroid Bennu, where water and organic compounds essential to the origin of life could be found.

Bennu is a roughly 0.3-mile-wide (500 meters) asteroid that orbits in near-Earth space. Scientists suspect it's a chunk of a larger asteroid that broke off due to a collision farther out.

Bennu’s near-Earth orbit and carbon-rich makeup have made it a target of scientific interest. It has been theorized that this asteroid contained water and organic molecules. Bennu and other ...

Asteroid samples fetched ... and that the water evaporated away, leaving behind the salty clues. Sixty labs around the world are analyzing bits of Bennu as part of initial studies, said the ...

Analysis of samples taken from the asteroid Bennu reveal the presence of organic compounds important for life, and that its parent asteroid probably contained salty, subsurface water. Collected by ...

In October 2020, a van-sized robotic spacecraft briefly touched down on the surface of Bennu, a 525-meter-wide asteroid ... from Earth indicated it as a B-type asteroid. These asteroids are ...

A sample from the near-Earth asteroid Bennu has been found to contain an abundance of water and carbon, reinforcing the theory that life on Earth was seeded from outer space. Just two weeks after ...