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101955 Bennu (provisional designation 1999 RQ 36) is a carbonaceous asteroid in the Apollo group discovered by the LINEAR Project on 11 September 1999. It is a potentially hazardous object that is listed on the Sentry Risk Table and has the second highest cumulative rating on the Palermo Technical Impact Hazard Scale. [9]
Asteroid 101955 Bennu is a B-type asteroid which is the target of the OSIRIS-REx mission. The mission seeks to characterize the asteroid by mapping the surface, studying the Yarkovsky effect, and retrieving a sample of the asteroid to return in 2023. The spacecraft was launched in 2016 and has been at Bennu since December 2018.
101955 Bennu: Orbiter/Sample Returner Successful 99942 Apophis: Orbiter/Regolith Disturber en route Successfully collected sample of Bennu on 20 October 2020 and returned the sample to Earth on 24 September 2023. For its extended mission called OSIRIS-APEX, the spacecraft is now en route to encounter Apophis on 8 April 2029. 13 Discovery 13 Lucy
Of the 160 asteroids with better than a 1-in-10,000 chance of impacting Earth only 101955 Bennu is larger than 50 meters in diameter. The soonest virtual impactor of an asteroid larger than 50 meters in diameter with a better than 1:1-million chance of impact is 2022 PX 1 on 11 August 2040 with a 1: 330 000 chance of impact. [8]
The number of bodies grows rapidly as the size decreases.Based on IRAS data there are about 140 main-belt asteroids with a diameter greater than 120 km, [6] which is approximately the transition point between surviving primordial asteroids and fragments thereof.
NASA is working on a modelling study that considers the asteroid 101955 Bennu, which has a diameter of 246 meters and capable of a 1.15 gigaton impact, as a modelling target for the HAMMER concept. [4] [5] It is circling the Sun at 63,000 mph and 54 million miles from the Earth. [6]
101955 Bennu: 0.490: 1999 OSIRIS-REx: 2018-2020: landed: landed: Arrived on 3 December 2018; entered lowest orbit on 12 June 2019; smallest object to be orbited by spacecraft and closest ever orbit; [5] [6] touchdown on 20 October 2020 to collect sample. 486958 Arrokoth: 36 × 18 × 10: 2014 New Horizons: 2019: 3,500: 380
Asteroid (101955) Bennu seen ejecting particles by the OSIRIS-REx. Active asteroids are objects that have asteroid-like orbits but show comet-like visual characteristics. That is, they show comae, tails, or other visual evidence of mass-loss (like a comet), but their orbit remains within Jupiter's orbit (like an asteroid).