Capture Date: 2013-02-07T00:00:00Z
On February 15, 2013, a 45-meter asteroid called Duende (formerly 2012 DA14) passed within 28,000 kilometers of Earth – the closest approach on record for an object of this size. Although such Near-Earth Objects, or NEO’s, cross our planet’s orbit on a regular basis, only a handful are large enough to pose a threat. One of these objects is asteroid Bennu (formerly 1999 RQ36), a “leftover” from the formation of our solar system. In an effort to better understand NEO’s and our planet’s own origins, NASA is sending the OSIRIS-REx spacecraft to asteroid Bennu to study the evolution of its orbit and retrieve a sample for return to Earth.