See it: NASA’s asteroid-chasing spacecraft slingshots past Earth
NASA’s OSIRIS-REx spacecraft successfully collected a sample from the asteroid Bennu and is now preparing for its next target, asteroid Apophis.
NASA’s OSIRIS-APEX imaged Earth as it passed about 2,100 miles above the planet’s surface.
It’s not often that a deep-space robotic explorer swings back by its home planet, but NASA’s OSIRIS-APEX mission did just that, completing a dramatic slingshot past Earth before racing toward its next asteroid target — one that will come extremely close to Earth in 2029.
Originally known as the Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification and Security–Regolith Explorer (OSIRIS-REx), the spacecraft captured a sample from the near-Earth asteroid Bennu in 2020 and successfully delivered the material to Earth in 2023.
The OSIRIS-APEX StowCam captures a view of Earth during a slingshot maneuver on Sept. 23, 2025. (Image Credit: NASA/Goddard/University of Arizona/Lockheed Martin)
Under its extended mission to study the asteroid Apophis, the spacecraft has been renamed OSIRIS-APEX, short for Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification and Security – Apophis Explorer.
Apophis, named for an Egyptian deity associated with chaos and the underworld, sparked international concerns when it was discovered in 2004 because early calculations suggested a potential impact with Earth. Scientists quickly refined those estimates, however, determining the asteroid will safely pass about 20,000 miles from Earth’s surface on April 13, 2029. According to NASA, that flyby will bring Apophis closer than many satellites and more than 200,000 miles closer than the average distance to the moon.
On Sept. 23, OSIRIS-APEX completed a precision gravity-assist maneuver, using Earth’s pull to adjust its trajectory in preparation to observe Apophis during its historic 2029 flyby.
This view of Earth was collected about nine hours after OSIRIS-APEX’s closest approach to Earth, when it was about 142,000 miles away from Earth and getting farther. The continent of Australia can be seen in Earth’s Southern Hemisphere. (Image credit: NASA/Goddard/University of Arizona)
NASA released a video showing Earth from the spacecraft’s StowCam taken on Sept. 23, with the blue planet filling the frame as OSIRIS-APEX streaks past.
This close approach also allowed mission teams to calibrate science instruments and verify the spacecraft’s systems as it awaits its next close encounter in just a few years.
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