OSIRIS-REx Exciting Mission to the Asteroid Bennu
The movie Don't Look Up was interesting if not weird. However you feel about the movie, its premise of a comet is coming to destroy Earth is low, but not impossible. That's one of the main reasons NASA launched the OSIRIS-REx Mission to explore the asteroid Bennu. It's not a comet, however, the asteroid is close enough to cause damage. "OSIRIS-REx" is an acronym that stands for Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification, Security, and Regolith Explorer. The OSIRIS-REx mission sent a space probe to Bennu back in December 2018 to "touch down" on the near-Earth asteroid Bennu some 200 million miles away to collect a sample and return to Earth in 2023. Yes, 200 million miles is NEAR Earth. The $1.16 billion OSIRIS-REx mission will be the first American spacecraft to return samples from an asteroid if the mission is successful. Bennu is one of the millions of asteroids in our…