"Blew Us Away": Experts On Life-Building Chemicals In Asteroid Bennu Samples Named after an Egyptian bird, Bennu contains special minerals such as salts, phosphates, ammonia and dozens of protein ...

NASA’s OSIRIS-REx mission returned samples from asteroid Bennu, which showed discoveries about life and the early solar system. These findings can now provide information into the potential ...

Bennu isn’t likely to hit Earth — but if it did, here’s what would happen Although classified as a potentially hazardous asteroid, Bennu probably won't hit Earth.

An impact from Bennu would be very destructive, but Earth has seen worse. Around 66 million years ago, an asteroid that was roughly 6 miles wide (10 kilometers across) struck Earth, killing most ...

Pristine samples of asteroid Bennu have revealed something entirely unexpected — not only does the asteroid contain the chemical building blocks of life, but it also originated from an ancient ...

Asteroid Bennu seems to have come from a long-lost world on the fringes of the solar system, where saltwater pooled and dried over thousands of years and life’s basic ingredients were widespread.

Indeed, scientists say there is a remote possibility of Bennu impacting Earth in the distant future: There is a 0.037 percent chance it will hit Earth in 2182, as well as a 1 out of 1,750 chance ...

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 ...

There’s certainly nothing living on the asteroid Bennu, an airless, 1,614-ft. rubble pile orbiting the sun about 40.2 million miles from Earth. But that doesn’t mean that Bennu hasn’t all at ...

Bennu — a rubble pile just one-third of a mile (one-half of a kilometer) across — was originally part of a much larger asteroid that got clobbered by other space rocks.

In 2018, the OSIRIS-REx mission arrived at the near-Earth asteroid Bennu to collect pristine samples, untouched by alterations induced by Earth's atmosphere, to be analyzed on Earth.

An evaporite sequence from ancient brine recorded in Bennu samples. Nature, 2025; 637 (8048): 1072 DOI: 10.1038/s41586-024-08495-6 ...