Bennu is a near-Earth asteroid discovered by the LINEAR Project on September 11, 1999. It has an orbital period of 1.2 years and is about 500 meters in diameter. Bennu is potentially hazardous because its orbit intersects that of Earth’s; however, the probability of an impact is very low (on the order of 1 in 2 million).
The name “Bennu” was chosen through a NASA contest open to middle school students. It refers to an ancient Egyptian mythological bird associated with the sun god Ra. Bennu was also the name of an OSIRIS-REx target asteroid in another contest held by The Planetary Society.
Bennu is a carbonaceous asteroid, meaning it contains water and organic materials. This makes it a valuable target for study, as it may provide clues about the early solar system and the origin of life on Earth. The OSIRIS-REx spacecraft will collect a sample from Bennu’s surface and return it to Earth for analysis.