Three articles published in the journal “Nature Astronomy” report the results of as many researches on asteroids Ryugu and Bennu, which are being explored respectively by JAXA’s Hayabusa 2 and NASA’s OSIRIS-REx space probes. The two asteroids already showed some similarities and, in a news & views editorial, Maria Cristina De Sanctis talks about the catastrophic events that might have generated them and the bright rocks discovered on the surface of both despite their dark color. Catastrophic events are also the object of the other two articles, and in the one focused on Bennu, there are indications that some rocks on its surface come from Vesta, one of the largest objects in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter.

A special collection of articles published in “Journal of Geophysical Research: Planets” reports the results of various researches on asteroid Bennu, in some cases already published in recent months. Various researchers used data collected by NASA’s OSIRIS-REx space probe getting some surprises about what happens on Bennu such as the loss of materials being ejected into space. Possible causes include meteoroids, thermal stress, and the ricochet of particles that fall back to the surface then bounce back into space. Bennu’s activity could only be noticed by a nearby space probe, and this raises the question of the possible activity of other asteroids.