The OSIRIS-REx Mission to Asteroid Bennu
OSIRIS-REx reached near-Earth asteroid Bennu, collected a surface sample, and delivered it to Earth in 2023. The mission’s primary goal was to study a primitive asteroid and return material for laboratory analysis. The spacecraft also measured Bennu’s properties and the Yarkovsky effect—the subtle influence of absorbed and re-emitted solar heat on an asteroid’s orbit.
These observations help improve future trajectory predictions for potentially hazardous asteroids, but the mission did not test intercepting or deflecting Bennu. A physical asteroid-deflection test was the goal of NASA’s separate DART mission.