OSIRIS-Rex II

At first glance, the asteroid Bennu seems pretty benign. It’s about a third of a mile across, and it’s probably a loose agglomeration of rock and ice. And because it contains a lot of carbon, it’s darker than a charcoal briquette. Yet Bennu isn’t quite as innocuous as it seems, as Arizona astronomer Ed Beshore explains:
BESHORE: It is one of the most threatening of all asteroids right now. It has roughly a one-in-a-thousand chance of hitting Earth late in the 22nd century, which is a pretty high chance when it comes to asteroid impacts.... It’s about a 500- to 600-meter-wide asteroid. Because of that, if it did hit the Earth, it would actually be a pretty destructive event. It probably wouldn’t be a civilization-threatening event, but it would be catastrophic.
Beshore is one of the lead scientists for a spacecraft that’s scheduled to study the asteroid. OSIRIS-Rex will launch as early as this week. After a long cruise, it’ll spend about two years flying along with Bennu. Then it’ll dro