【Sabik (2025)】

A spacecraft on Sabik (2025)a mission to bite off a piece of an asteroid just flew past Earth, snapping a photo of our home planet along the way.

NASA's OSIRIS-REx spacecraft is expected to get to the asteroid Bennu next year, but on Friday, about one year after its launch, the spacecraft slingshotted around Earth to get it speeding in the right direction for its meetup with the space rock, which is taller than the Empire State Building.

SEE ALSO: NASA just launched a spacecraft to help us find the origins of life on Earth

Scientists took the opportunity to snap photos of Earth for a composite image showing our entire planet.

"Visible in this image are the Pacific Ocean and several familiar landmasses, including Australia in the lower left, and Baja California and the southwestern United States in the upper right," NASA said in a statement.

"The dark vertical streaks at the top of the image are caused by short exposure times (less than three milliseconds)."

Mashable Light Speed Want more out-of-this world tech, space and science stories? Sign up for Mashable's weekly Light Speed newsletter. By clicking Sign Me Up, you confirm you are 16+ and agree to our Terms of Use and Privacy Policy. Thanks for signing up!

Original image has been replaced. Credit: Mashable

The OSIRIS-REx photo is part of the mission managers' plan to calibrate the spacecraft's instruments in anticipation of its arrival at the asteroid in late 2018.

Once at Bennu, OSIRIS-REx will study the space rock from close range and even sample the asteroid, collecting a piece of it to send it back to Earth for scientists to study in detail. Ideally, the sample should make it back to our planet by 2023.

Researchers are particularly interested in learning more about Bennu because it's a remnant from the early days of the solar system, 4.5 billion years ago.

By studying the asteroid up close, scientists should get a better sense of how planets and other objects in the solar system formed.

This Tweet is currently unavailable. It might be loading or has been removed.

It's even possible that data from Bennu could help explain how life came to be on Earth. Early asteroids might have slammed into Earth, delivering some of the ingredients for life as we understand it to form.

"The formation of the solar system was a violent but dimly recorded time," Jason Dworkin, OSIRIS-REx project scientist, said during a news conference ahead of the mission's launch in 2016.

"Although most of the record of the ancient Earth is lost to the dynamic geology that shaped our planet, there are lines of evidence that indicate that heavy bombardment by debris from the formation of the solar system around the same time helped form the oceans, and around a few million years later, life."

---

Featured Video For You

---

NASA just launched a spacecraft to help us find the origins of life on Earth

---

• Deals
• Digital Culture
• Tech
• Shopping
• Life
• Science
• Social Good
• Entertainment

• Best robot vacuum deal: Get the Roborock Q5 Max for 53% off at Amazon
• NYT Strands hints, answers for September 15
• Manchester City vs. Brentford 2024 livestream: Watch Premier League for free
• French startup Mistral unveils Pixtral 12B multimodal AI model
• Why Building a Gaming PC Right Now is a Bad Idea, Part 3: Bad Timing
• Taylor Swift's voter registration link saw over 337,000 visitors
• Manchester City vs. Brentford 2024 livestream: Watch Premier League for free
• Fitbit watches, trackers to get a premium feature for free
• Trump is feeling really, really under
• Seattle Storm vs. Dallas Wings 2024 livestream: Watch live WNBA

• Feast your eyes on these 'Star Wars' treasures from the 'Last Jedi' junket
• California's worst fire season just got even more devastating
• Instagram's new Story Highlights feature lets you save Stories forever
• Apple releases iOS 11.2 early after phones started crashing on Dec. 2
• OnePlus 5T Star Wars
• For millennials, sending your first text message was a rite of passage
• Venezuela to launch 'petro', a cryptocurrency backed by oil and other reserves
• Google debuts Google Go, its lightweight search for slow connections
• Here's how to get your Spotify 2017 listening history
• Photos and videos show wildfire devastation across Southern California

• Free Rita's Italian Ice: How to get free Italian Ice on March 20
• Spotify announces pilot Premium membership tailored for kids
• Apple iOS 18 release date today: When you can download it
• Google's AI has been contracted by a state to help decide its unemployment claims
• The fat bears are already extremely fat
• How the Pet Shop Boys became the soundtrack to 'Industry' Season 3
• 'Should I upgrade to iPhone 16?’ Only if you fall into these 5 categories
• There's a record number of humans in space right now, NASA announces
• Watch how an old Venus spacecraft tumbled before crashing to Earth
• Spotify announces pilot Premium membership tailored for kids

• How to Easily Make iPhone Ringtones Using Only iTunes
• Save $8 per month ($24 total) on Disney+ before the October price hikes
• Chicago Sky vs. Minnesota Lynx 2024 livestream: Watch live WNBA
• Apple's iPhone 16 Pro: Replacing the battery is a lot pricier than before
• SpaceX lands its first rocket on West Coast ground: Watch
• Meet o1: OpenAI's advanced reasoning 'Strawberry' model
• Discover Samsung Fall Sale: All of the best live deals
• Google's AI has been contracted by a state to help decide its unemployment claims
• SpaceX's BFR has a new name. Elon Musk is calling it Starship.
• Today's Hurdle hints and answers for September 16, 2024