You’ve never seen an asteroid like this before.
This technicolor marvel is a compilation of more than 11 million measurements of an asteroid called Bennu, all gathered by a NASA probe called OSIRIS-REx. That spacecraft arrived in December and since then has been conducting a carefully planned survey of the space rock.
The 3-dimensional view is based on data gathered in February and shows the surface height of Bennu, with a nearly 200-foot (60-meter) difference in height between the lowland dark blue areas and the red peaks.
Now, the spacecraft has just entered a phase called the Detailed Survey: Equatorial Stations, and follows the Detailed Survey: Baseball Diamond stage that the team behind the mission just concluded. Both stages are detailed examinations of the asteroid, which the spacecraft will sample as the culmination of its mission at Bennu.