NASA’s OSIRIS-REx spacecraft mission, launched on Sept. 8, 2016, is the first U.S. mission designed to retrieve a pristine sample of an asteroid and return it to Earth for further study. The mission’s target is Bennu, a carbon-rich near-Earth asteroid that is potentially hazardous, representing an approximately 1 in 2,700 chance of impacting the Earth late in the 22nd century.
![](https://scx1.b-cdn.net/csz/news/tmb/2020/planetaryast.jpg)
Source:
https://phys.org/news/2020-10-osiris-rex-mission-history-asteroid-bennu.html