NASA spacecraft OSIRIS-REx arrives at an asteroid named Bennu this morning on a mission to collect a sample from the asteroid’s surface and bring it back to Earth.
The craft has been travelling through space for more than two years.
It will come within 20 kilometres of the 500-metre (1,640-foot) near-Earth asteroid today.
The Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification, Security-Regolith Explorer (OSIRIS-REx) spacecraft arrives at the near-Earth asteroid Bennu today. (NASA/Reuters)
The goal of the mission is to learn more about the origins of life on Earth and perhaps elsewhere in the solar system.
Coverage of the event will be streamed live starting 11:45 a.m. ET.
LIVE: Asteroid Bennu, meet <a href=”https://twitter.com/OSIRISREx?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw”>@OSIRISREx</a>; <a href=”https://twitter.com/OSIRISREx?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw”>@OSIRISREx</a>, meet Bennu. Our asteroid sample return mission’s rendezvous with its target, a carbon-rich, near-Earth asteroid, begins now. <a href=”https://twitter.com/hashtag/WelcomeToBennu?src=hash&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw”>#WelcomeToBennu</a> <a href=”https://t.co/ft1jXgg8n1″>https://t.co/ft1jXgg8n1</a>
—@NASA