Asteroid Bennu

NASA’s first asteroid-sampling mission OSIRIS-REx, which went into orbit around asteroid Bennu on New Year’s Eve, has captured incredible photographs of the smallest ever celestial body to be orbited by a spacecraft.

Key Facts

• Launched from Florida in 2016, OSIRIS-REx spacecraft reached Bennu, an asteroid the size of the pyramid at Giza, on December 3, 2018 after travelling more than one billion miles through space.
• The image was obtained at a 50-degree phase angle between the spacecraft, asteroid and the sun, and in it, Bennu spans approximately 1,500 pixels in the camera’s field of view.
• The team of scientists found that Bennu ....