NASA’s OSIRIS-REx probe is tasked with the mission of obtaining a sample of 101955 Bennu, a carbonaceous near-Earth asteroid. Discovered in September 1999, Bennu has a 1-in-2,700 chance of hitting Earth at some point. But, if it does, it’ll happen long after we’re all gone at some point between 2175 and 2199.
OSIRIS-REx arrived at Bennu in December 2018 after a two-year journey, and it just sent back a pretty interesting photo. On first glance, it doesn’t look that amazing, but we see here is Bennu (the big bright dot on the right), along with the Earth and Moon (the two smaller dots on the lower left) 71 million miles away.
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