NASA's OSIRIS-REx asteroid-sampling mission formally ended on Sept. 30, 2026, though scientists will continue to study the pieces of space rock it returned for decades.

GLASSBORO - Dr. Harold Connolly will wait seven years for his asteroid samples to return from space on a $1 billion mission.

Asteroid Bennu, a dark rubble pile roughly the height of the Empire State Building, has turned out to be a chemical treasure chest. Samples ferried home by NASA’s OSIRIS-REx spacecraft are packed with ...

On Dec. 3, after traveling billions of kilometers from Earth, NASA’s OSIRIS-REx spacecraft reached its target, Bennu, and kicked off a nearly two-year, up-close investigation of the asteroid. It will ...

Asteroid Bennu has puzzled scientists for years. Its surface is covered with massive boulders, a landscape that should, in ...

NASA scientists have finally uncovered why asteroid Bennu loses heat so quickly despite being covered in massive boulders. Samples returned to Earth reveal that its rocks are filled with hidden cracks ...

NASA’s first asteroid sample return mission now knows much more about the material it’ll be collecting in just a few weeks. In a special collection of six papers published today in the journals ...

Documenting NASA's incredible twenty-year mission to land a spacecraft on an asteroid. An all-new, one-hour documentary revealing the incredible challenges, surprises and human triumphs of OSIRIS-REx, ...

It’s official: NASA’s OSIRIS-REx spacecraft snagged 121.6 grams of pristine space rocks when it bopped the asteroid Bennu four years ago, more than double the mission’s official science goal, the ...

Magnesium-sodium phosphate found in NASA's OSIRIS-Rex asteroid sample suggests Bennu, seen above, could have originated from an ancient, primitive ocean world. Credit: NASA What the team found was ...

Announced on Friday, the images are the latest milestone in an ambitious attempt to study the asteroid in detail and, hopefully, to bring back samples from its surface. The five images were captured ...

Bits of rock and dust brought back from the distant asteroid Bennu contain some of the chemical building blocks of life, NASA announced Wednesday, a discovery that strengthens the theory that ...