In a study released Wednesday, NASA researchers used precision-tracking data from the agency’s Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification, Security-Regolith Explorer, or OSIRIS-REx, spacecraft to better understand movements of the potentially hazardous asteroid Bennu through the year 2300, significantly reducing uncertainties related to its future orbit, and improving scientists’ ability to determine the total impact probability and predict orbits of other asteroids.
While NASA s OSIRIS-REx mission spent more than two years orbiting Bennu, it was able to gather unprecedented information as well as a sample that is currently heading back to Earth. The sample will arrive in September 2023.