Asteroid Bennu

News: Asteroid Bennu has been making headlines due to NASA’s OSIRIS-REx (Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification, Security-Regolith Explorer) mission, which aims to collect and return samples from the asteroid to Earth.

About Asteroid Bennu

• Bennu is a near-Earth asteroid located about 200 million miles away from Earth.
• It was discovered in 1999 by the NASA-funded Lincoln Near-Earth Asteroid Research team.

Features:

• Bennu is a B-type asteroid, meaning it contains high amounts of carbon and various minerals.
• It is about as tall as the Empire State Building.
• Bennu’s age (4.5 billion years) suggests it may contain primordial organic material. Organic materials on Bennu may provide clues about the role of asteroids in catalyzing life on Earth.
• It reflects only 4% of light, making it much darker than Venus (65%) or Earth (30%).
• 20-40% of Bennu’s interior is empty space, suggesting it formed in the first 10 million years of the solar system’s history.
• High-resolution images reveal large boulders on its surface, making sample collection difficult.
• Bennu is particularly interesting because:
  • It hasn’t changed much since its formation.
  • It contains chemical compounds and minerals from the birth of the solar system.
  • It may contain organic molecules similar to those that contributed to life on Earth.

About Asteroids

• Asteroids are rocky objects that orbit the Sun, smaller than planets, also called minor planets.
• They are remnants from the formation of the solar system over 4.6 billion years ago.
• NASA has identified 994,383 asteroids to date.

Asteroids are classified into three categories:

1. Main Asteroid Belt – Located between Mars and Jupiter, containing 1.1-1.9 million asteroids.
2. Trojans – Share an orbit with a larger planet (e.g., Jupiter, Neptune, Mars).
3. Near-Earth Asteroids (NEA) – Have orbits that pass close to Earth.
   • More than 10,000 NEAs are known.
   • 1,400+ are classified as Potentially Hazardous Asteroids (PHAs) due to their potential impact risk.