APOD
3D Bennu
October 18, 2025
About This Image
Put on your red/blue glasses and float next to asteroid 101955 Bennu. Shaped like a spinning toy top with boulders littering its rough surface, the tiny Solar System world is about one Empire State Building (less than 500 meters) across. Frames used to construct this 3D anaglyph were taken by PolyCam on the OSIRIS_REx spacecraft on December 3, 2018 from a distance of about 80 kilometers. With a sample from the asteroid's rocky surface on board, OSIRIS_REx departed Bennu's vicinity in May of 2021. The robotic spacecraft successfully returned the sample to its home world in September of 2023.
On This Day in Space History
On October 18, 1989, the Galileo spacecraft was launched toward Jupiter, where it would study the gas giant and its moons for 14 years.
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