OSIRIS-REx discovers water on asteroid, confirms Bennu as excellent mission target
Monday, December 10, 2018 - 16:30
in Astronomy & Space
From August through early December, the OSIRIS-REx spacecraft aimed three of its science instruments toward Bennu and began making the mission's first observations of the asteroid. During this period, the spacecraft traveled the last 1.4 million miles (2.2 million km) of its outbound journey to arrive at a spot 12 miles (19 km) from Bennu on Dec. 3. The science obtained from these initial observations confirmed many of the mission team's ground-based observations of Bennu and revealed several new surprises.