NASA spacecraft snaps asteroid Bennu's first picture

New Delhi : Launched two years back, NASA's spacecraft is marching towards asteroid Bennu. The spacecraft, OSIRIS-REx — Origins, has snapped the ancient asteroid for the very first time.

Check out the blurry picture of the ancient asteroid Bennu, which is about the size of a small mountain, about 500 meters in diameter below: 

The spacecraft has been designed in a way that it will reach the asteroid, collect sample and will return to Earth by 2023.

The first images of Bennu were taken on August 17 at a distance of 1.4 million miles (2.3 million kilometres) from the $800 million spacecraft.

"This is the closest we have even been to Bennu," said Dante Lauretta, OSIRIS-REx principal investigator at the University of Arizona, Tucson.

"This is significant in that we are now in the vicinity of the asteroid, closer than we have ever been even during the close approaches of the asteroid to the Earth."

The OSIRIS-REx mission is not the first to ever visit an asteroid and attempt a sample return -- Japan has done it before and Europe has managed to land on a comet. But it is the first asteroid-sample-return mission for NASA, and it aims to bring back the biggest sample ever, on the order of 2.1 ounces (60 grams).