NASA spacecraft buzzes Earth on way to distant asteroid Bennu.
The OSIRIS-REx spacecraft zoomed past our planet on September 22, a little over a year after launching on a mission to the big near-Earth asteroid Bennu. The probe's closest approach came at 12:52 p.m. EDT (1752 GMT), when OSIRIS-REx passed a mere 10,711 miles (17,237 kilometers) above Antarctica near the southern tip of South America, NASA officials said. [OSIRIS-REx: NASA's Asteroid Sample-Return Mission in Pictures] OSIRIS-REx didn't come back because it was homesick. The flyby was designed to boost the probe's speed and refine its course toward the 1,640-foot-wide (500 meters) Bennu, whose orbit around the sun is tilted by 6 degrees relative to that of Earth.
Image credit - NASA
Check it out at https://www.space.com/38238-osiris-rex-asteroid-spacecraft-earth-flyby.html