Hydrated Materials Found On Asteroid Bennu During OSIRIS-REx Mission

Published: Tuesday, December 11, 2018 - 2:20pm
Updated: Friday, December 14, 2018 - 10:05am
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NASA/Goddard/University of Arizona
An mosaic image of asteroid Bennu, composed of 12 PolyCam images collected on Dec. 2, 2018, by the OSIRIS-REx spacecraft from a range of 15 miles.

After a journey of 1.4 million miles, OSIRIS-REx, NASA’s mission spacecraft, arrived 12 miles from an asteroid named Bennu.

And just a week later, big news made it back to Earth — the presence of hydrated minerals.

So, does that mean water has been found on an asteroid? And why would that be important for scientists and even future manned missions into space?

Mike Wall, who covers NASA for Space.com, joined The Show to talk about it

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