• UGI USER
  • Mar 27, 2023
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OSIRIS-Rex Mission

News: On September 24, 2023, the NASA OSIRIS-REx spacecraft will land in a Utah desert after spending two years traveling back to Earth and gathering samples from the asteroid Bennu’s stony surface.

OSIRIS-Rex Project:

In order to get to Bennu, NASA launched the Origins Spectral Interpretation Resource Identification Security – Regolith Explorer in 2016.

The spacecraft visited the asteroid Bennu, which is close to Earth, and returned with a sample for examination on planet Earth.

The project will advance our knowledge of asteroids that may strike Earth and assist scientists in their investigations into the origins of life and planet formation.

Bennu, an asteroid, is around 200 million miles from Earth.

It is a B-type asteroid, which means that it likely has a lot of carbon and other minerals.

Bennu has an interior that is between 20 and 40 percent empty, and scientists think that it formed within the first 10 million years of the solar system’s formation, making it around 4.5 billion years old.

According to theories, Bennu was born in the Main Asteroid Belt, which is located between Mars and Jupiter. As a result of gravitational pulls from other celestial bodies and the little push asteroids receive when they expel absorbed sunlight, the asteroid is moving closer to Earth.