Bennu
A small near-Earth asteroid from which NASA's OSIRIS-REx mission brought a sample back to Earth in 2023.
NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI; J. DePasquale, A. Koekemoer, A. Pagan (STScI) (CC BY 4.0)
A pile of loose rubble held together by almost nothing, and one of the few places in space we have brought a piece of back to Earth.
Bennu is a carbon-rich rubble pile about half a kilometre across: a loose collection of rocks held together by weak gravity. Its orbit comes close to Earth’s.
OSIRIS-REx collected about 120 grams of material from its surface in 2020 and delivered it to Earth in September 2023. Studying it helps us understand the early solar system and the asteroids that could one day approach Earth.
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