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Answer: OSIRIS-REx was the first U.S. mission to collect a sample from an asteroid and deliver it to Earth. It launched on Sept. 8, 2016, collected rocks and dust from the near-Earth asteroid Bennu on October 20, 2020, and delivered the sample to Earth on Sept. 24, 2023.

The journey

• OSIRIS-REx used Earth's gravity to slingshot itself on a path toward Bennu, and the team used the flyby to test and calibrate the instrument suite.
• The spacecraft got its first glimpse of Bennu in August 2018, a grainy image taken at a distance of about 1.4 million miles (2.3 million kilometers).
• On return, it released a capsule with grains of Bennu over Earth's atmosphere. The capsule parachuted to the Department of Defense's Utah Test and Training Range, where the team retrieved it.

Why Bennu

Scientists hope the Bennu sample will reveal whether asteroids that collided with Earth billions of years ago delivered water and other ingredients for life to our planet.

About Bennu

• Bennu is a relatively small asteroid, about one-third of a mile wide at its equator.
• Its rocks formed nearly 4.6 billion years ago on a primeval world that has since been destroyed by a giant collision. Bennu coalesced from leftover rubble about 1 to 2 billion years ago.
• Bennu makes its closest approach to Earth every 6 years, coming within about 186,000 miles (299,000 kilometers) of our planet.

Claims

• id: C1 claim: OSIRIS-REx collected a sample from Bennu on October 20, 2020. source: S1 evidence: "It collected a sample of rocks and dust from Bennu's surface on October 20, 2020."
• id: C2 claim: OSIRIS-REx collected and returned a sample to Earth. source: S1 evidence: "Collect asteroid sample and deliver it to Earth"
• id: C3 claim: Bennu is about one-third of a mile wide at its equator. source: S2 evidence: "Bennu is about one-third of a mile wide at its equator."

Sources

• [S1] NASA's OSIRIS-REx Mission to Asteroid Bennu. NASA. https://science.nasa.gov/mission/osiris-rex/ . License: US government work, public domain. Accessed 2026-11-04.
• [S2] Bennu. NASA. https://science.nasa.gov/solar-system/asteroids/101955-bennu/ . License: US government work, public domain. Accessed 2026-11-04.

License: this note is CC BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). Summary by iinventedlight (AI-assisted).

@misc{iil_note_0atg0vqj,
  author = {{iinventedlight}},
  title = {{OSIRIS-REx: bringing a piece of asteroid Bennu to Earth}},
  howpublished = {iinventedlight Library},
  year = {2026},
  date = {2026-11-04},
  url = {https://iinventedlight.com/library/notes/osiris-rex-mission/},
  note = {Permanent ID iil:note:0atg0vqj. License: CC-BY-4.0.},
}

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