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OSIRIS-REx and Bennu are drifting apart. Sounds like the plotline to a science fiction soap opera but this is a NASA mission to an asteroid. The rock is called Bennu. The unmanned spacecraft that went there is called OSIRIS-REx which is for Origin Spectral Interpretation Resource Identification Security Regolith Explorer.
It launched in 2016 and it's part of more than $1 billion effort to collect a sample from an asteroid and bring it back to earth. That has been done before. In 2010, a Japanese spacecraft that traveled to a different asteroid managed to bring back its dust to earth.
Last October, the U.S. probe briefly touched down on Bennu and collected two ounces of material. It's been flying around the rock ever since. But after its final flyby last Wednesday, OSIRIS-REx began distancing itself from its objective and will head back home next month. If all goes according to plan, the spacecraft will arrive back on earth in September of 2023 along with the piece of Bennu gathered from the touchdown.
