The asteroid has a close approach to Earth every six years.
Scientists used NASA's Deep Space Network and state-of-the-art computer models to determine its total impact probability through the year 2300 and found that Bennu has a 1 in 1,750 chance of impacting the Earth during one of its close approaches to the Earth in the late 22nd century. Researchers singled out September 24, 2182, as the likeliest date in terms of a potential impact, with a probability of 1 in 2,700., the destruction would be enormous.
Before leaving Bennu, OSIRIS-REx spent more than two years close to the asteroid. It monitored and gathered information about Bennu's size, shape, mass, composition, spin, and original trajectory. The sample of rock collected from the asteroid's surface will be delivered to Earth on September 24, 2023, for further scientific investigation.
, of the Center for Near Earth Object Studies , which is managed by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California. "We’ve never modeled an asteroid’s trajectory to this precision before."The spacecraft's navigation camera also noted that Bennu was emitting streams of particles a couple of times every week. It turns out that Bennu is not just a rare active asteroid but also among the first of its kind observed by humans from a spacecraft.
"The thermal fractures on Bennu are quite similar to what we find on Earth and on Mars in terms of how they form,", a co-author of the paper at Université Côte d’Azur, CNRS, Observatoire de la Côte d’Azur, Géoazur, Sophia-Antipolis, Valbonne, France. "It is fascinating to see that they can exist and are similar in very ‘exotic’ physical conditions [low gravity, no atmosphere], even compared to Mars.