The spaceship successfully made contact with the asteroid at 17.09 GMT on December 3, after travelling more than a BILLION miles through the cosmos. Lockheed Martin communications system engineer Javier Cerna raised his arms in jubilation and announced: “We have arrived.” The spacecraft will spend two years flying alongside Bennu at a distance of nearly 12 kilometres from the object, regularly making physical contact to collect two kilograms of samples from the massive space rock, NASA explained.
The OSIRIS-Rex mission blasted off from Florida in September 2016.
The spacecraft will collect samples from the space rock which could pave the way for an asteroid mining industry, with some of them worth trillions of dollars because of their minerals which are scarce on Earth such as platinum.
It will also give vital information on how to deflect asteroids from their collision course with Earth.
Part of the reason NASA is sending the OSIRIS-Rex spacecraft there is to gather more information about the space rock which is 500 metres in length.
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NASA fears that the asteroid, which has the potential to wipe out a country on Earth, could hit our planet within the next 200 years, with the next close flyby in 2135, but this depends on the Yarkovsky effect.
The Yarkovsky effect is when an asteroid or celestial body changes its orbit due to small push from heat.
The mission will give vital information on how to deflect asteroids from their collision course with Earth.
Finally, it will help unlock the secrets of the solar system.
OSIRIS-Rex will stay alongside asteroid for two years and then will return to Earth in a historic first.
NASA said in a statement: “Analysing a sample from Bennu will help planetary scientists better understand the role asteroids may have played in delivering life-forming compounds to Earth.
“We know from having studied Bennu through Earth- and space-based telescopes that it is a carbonaceous, or carbon-rich, asteroid. Carbon is the hinge upon which organic molecules hang.
“Bennu is likely rich in organic molecules, which are made of chains of carbon bonded with atoms of oxygen, hydrogen, and other elements in a chemical recipe that makes all known living things.
“Besides carbon, Bennu also might have another component important to life: water, which is trapped in the minerals that make up the asteroid.”