Largest Asteroid News Today

After months of waiting, NASA's OSIRIS-REx asteroid sample return container is unlocked — and the space agency has weighed the total Bennu sample.

NASA is set to reveal on Wednesday the first images of the largest asteroid sample ever collected in space, something scientists hope will yield clues about the earliest days of our solar system and perhaps the origins of life itself.OSIRIS-REx wasn't the first mission to rendezvous with an asteroid and bring back samples for study -- Japan succeeded in the feat twice, returning bits of space pebbles in 2010 and 2020.

The climactic end of a seven-year voyage comes Sunday when a NASA capsule is due to land in the Utah desert, carrying to Earth the largest asteroid samples ever collected.Four years after its 2016 launch, the probe landed on the asteroid Bennu and collected roughly nine ounces (250 grams) of dust from its rocky surface.  

Scientists plan to methodically examine samples from NASA's first asteroid mission, OSIRIS-REx, to figure out how our solar system formed.

Asteroids are the most plentiful object in the solar system and so are objects of endless fascination. Here's everything you need to know about them.

The largest asteroid to pass by Earth this year will approach within some 1.25 million miles (two million kilometers) of our planet on March 21, NASA said Thursday.