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Is it a spacecraft? An asteroid? Well, both. This small central speck is the first image of a spacecraft on its way home, carrying with it a sample from an asteroid hundreds-of-millions, if-not-billions-of-years old. The spacecraft is NASA<\/a>\u2019s OSIRIS-REx<\/a>, the asteroid is Bennu<\/a>.<\/p>\n On Sunday 24 September, the mission will drop its rocky sample off to fall through Earth\u2019s atmosphere and land safely back home, before it continues on to study the once rather scary asteroid Apophis<\/a>.<\/p>\n Spotted on 16 September by ESA\u2019s Optical Ground Station (OGS) telescope<\/a> in Tenerife, OSIRIS-REx was 4.66 million km from Earth. This image is a combination of 90 individual images, each 36-second exposures. They have been combined in a way that takes into account the motion of the spacecraft, which is not travelling in a straight line, causing the seemingly stretched background stars to curve and warp.<\/p>\n ESA\u2019s 1-metres OGS telescope was originally built to observe space debris<\/a> in orbit and test laser communication technologies, but since broadened its horizons to also conduct surveys and follow-up observations of near-Earth asteroids<\/a> and make night-time astronomy observations and has even discovered dozens of minor planets.<\/p>\n For this observation, ESA\u2019s Near-Earth Object Coordination Centre<\/a> (NEOCC) took over the reins, directing it at the returning asteroid explorer. The NEOCC, part of the Agency\u2019s Planetary Defence Office<\/a>, is a little like Europe\u2019s asteroid sorting hat; the centre and its experts are scanning the skies for risky space rocks, computing their orbits and calculating their risk of impact.<\/p>\n From our small but mighty Space Safety<\/a> telescope, we say \u2018Hello, OSIRIS-REx, good luck NASA and welcome safely to Earth, asteroid Bennu!\u2019.<\/p>\n (Read all about ESA\u2019s Hera mission<\/a> that launches next year to examine the first test of asteroid deflection, the first mission to rendezvous with a binary asteroid system.)<\/p>\n