OSIRIS-REx Arrives at Bennu

Credits: NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center/University of Arizona

This series of images taken by the OSIRIS-REx spacecraft shows Bennu in one full rotation from a distance of around 50 miles (80 km). The spacecraft’s PolyCam camera obtained the thirty-six 2.2-millisecond frames over a period of four hours and 18 minutes.

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Source / Image Courtesy

NASA’s Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification, Security-Regolith Explorer (OSIRIS-REx) spacecraft rendezvoused with asteroid, Bennu, on Monday, Dec. 3.

OSIRIS-REx launched in September 2016 and has been slowly approaching Bennu. The spacecraft will spend almost a year surveying the asteroid with five scientific instruments with the goal of selecting a location that is safe and scientifically interesting to collect the sample of the asteroid. OSIRIS-REx will return the sample to Earth in September 2023.