The asteroid, officially known by NASA as 231937 , is smaller than the last notable one to closely approach Earth, but it will be three times closer, NASA said in a statement. CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) — A NASA spacecraft left a mess at an asteroid when it grabbed a load of rubble last year for return to Earth, new pictures revealed Thursday. NASA to hold asteroid simulation event to protect Earth from monster space rocks NASA will run an asteroid impact simulation event over the course of … A spacecraft carrying pristine asteroid samples and 4,000 megabytes of data is about to fly home from the asteroid Bennu. Currently, NASA is tracking the course of several hundreds of asteroids that could potentially be hazardous to human life on Earth. NASA will run an asteroid impact simulation event over the course of the week as the space agency ups its game in the pursuit of keeping Earth safe from threatening space rocks. While there are no known significant asteroids on a collision course with Earth , an asteroid impact is considered inevitable in our planet’s future. Like boot prints on the Moon, NASA's OSIRIS-REx spacecraft left its mark on asteroid Bennu. NASA thinks the asteroid is between 393 feet and 885 feet across. New images taken by the OSIRIS-REx mission show the historic first touchdown of a NASA spacecraft on the near-Earth asteroid Bennu. On Sunday, the 10-meter asteroid 2021 DD1 and the 61-meter asteroid 2021 DK1 will shoot past Earth at a safe distance of 1.6 million kilometers and six million kilometers, respectively. The Osiris-Rex spacecraft made one final flyby of asteroid Bennu on April 7 to take photos of the disturbance left by October’s sample collection. A depression is visible where Osiris-Rex penetrated the asteroid's surface. NASA asteroid-sampling spacecraft looks at 'the mess it made' on Bennu. NASA made history Tuesday after a spacecraft successfully collected samples from the surface of an asteroid during a carefully orchestrated, hourslong maneuver in orbit. The space agency also maintains a record of their movement with the help of NASA Asteroid watch data on its official website. The spacecraft collected a sample that … At the upper limit, this is nearly as wide as the Eiffel Tower is tall. However, they are just the warm-up act for what NASA describes as the “ stadium-sized ” asteroid 2020 XU6, which measures some 213 meters in diameter. For this exact same purpose, NASA has deployed multiple Asteroid watching satellites. Osiris-Rex enthusiastically snagged a bit of asteroid Bennu, and on Wednesday it flew in to examine the mark it … A NASA spacecraft briefly touched the surface of an asteroid, attempted to collect a sample of extraterrestrial rocks and then successfully propelled itself …