On Sept. 23, 2025, NASA’s OSIRIS-APEX (Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification, and Security – Apophis Explorer) mission flew within about 2,100 miles (3,400 kilometers) of Earth, part of its journey to asteroid Apophis. Passing about 100 times closer to Earth than the Moon’s orbit, the spacecraft performed a gravity assist maneuver to alter the spacecraft’s trajectory and velocity.
OSIRIS-APEX was previously known as OSIRIS-REx (Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification, and Security – Regolith Explorer), a mission to collect a sample of asteroid Bennu. When OSIRIS-REx left Bennu in May 2021 with a sample aboard, it had a quarter of its fuel left and its instruments were in great condition. So instead of shutting down the spacecraft after it delivered its Bennu sample to Earth on Sept. 24, 2023, and sending it into a forever orbit around the Sun, the team proposed to dispatch it on a bonus mission to Apophis. NASA agreed and OSIRIS-APEX was born.