101955 Bennu (provisional designation 1999 RQ 36) is a carbonaceous asteroid in the Apollo group discovered by the LINEAR Project on 11 September 1999. It is a potentially hazardous object that is listed on the Sentry Risk Table and has the third highest cumulative rating on the Palermo scale. [9]

Oct 16, 2020 · Bennu is a primordial artifact preserved in the vacuum of space, orbiting among planets and moons and asteroids and comets. Because it is so old, Bennu could be made of material containing molecules that were present when life first formed on Earth.

Jan 29, 2025 · Studies of rock and dust from asteroid Bennu delivered to Earth by NASA’s OSIRIS-REx (Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification and Security–Regolith Explorer) spacecraft have revealed molecules that, on our planet, are key to life, as well as a history of saltwater that could have served as the “broth” for these ...

Bennu (/ ˈ b ɛ n uː /) [1] is an ancient Egyptian deity linked with the Sun, creation, and rebirth. He may have been the original inspiration for the phoenix legends that developed in Greek mythology.

Mar 27, 2025 · The rocks Bennu is made of formed nearly 4.6 billion years ago on a primeval world that has since been destroyed by a giant collision. Bennu coalesced from a small portion of the leftover rubble about 1 to 2 billion years ago.

Oct 11, 2023 · Initial studies of the 4.5-billion-year-old asteroid Bennu sample collected in space and brought to Earth by NASA show evidence of high-carbon content and water, which together could indicate the building blocks of life on Earth may be found in the rock.

Feb 10, 2025 · Bennu is a carbon-rich asteroid that is about one-third of a mile (half a kilometer) wide at its equator. An ancient relic of our solar system’s early days, asteroid Bennu has seen more than 4.5 billion years of history.

Jan 29, 2025 · 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 in the outer solar system.

Mar 27, 2025 · Scientists first caught sight of Bennu on Sept. 11, 1999, with a one-meter telescope near Socorro, New Mexico, during the Lincoln Laboratory Near Earth Research (LINEAR) survey. The asteroid was within 0.05 astronomical units of Earth (about 20 times the distance from Earth to the Moon).

Mar 11, 2025 · The asteroid Bennu is puzzling scientists, with samples from the space rock showing weirder properties than they expected. These include extremely high nitrogen levels and improbably magnetic ...