OSIRIS-REx, short for Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification-Regolith Explorer, should reach the near-Earth asteroid by 2018.
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The OSIRIS-REx will collect at least 60 grams of the asteroid’s rocky surface and bring them back to Earth for further scientific analysis in detail, hoping to decode the mysteries of our solar system’s origin, as well as life on our planet.
– NASA’s Atlas V rocket lifted off on Thursday from Cape Canaveral, Florida, USA, with the OSIRIS-REx space probe en route to the asteroid Bennu, whose trajectory could be a danger to Earth in the future.
Called Osiris-Rex, the probe will take two years to travel to the near-earth asteroid Bennu, which orbits the sun at roughly the same distance as earth.
NASA’s asteroid-skimming spacecraft just blasted off into space without a hitch, completing the first step in a seven-year journey that will eventually bring us back several spoonfuls worth of dirt from an asteroid.
Scientists will ultimately choose a promising site on Bennu to sample and command Osiris-Rex to fly close enough to extend its robot arm to the asteroid’s surface.
Osiris-Rex is the latest in a series of missions to asteroids that began with the 1991 flyby of asteroid Gaspra by NASA’s Jupiter-bound Galileo spacecraft.
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“The more big pieces we can get the better. they could contain the carbon molecules that we want to see”, Jim Garvin, chief scientist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland, said on NASA TV. Established in partnership with the UAE Space Agency and Mubadala, this program for early career professionals across the UAE aerospace industry includes training in the United Arab Emirates and the United States. A follow-on mission, Hayabusa 2, is under way, with a return to Earth planned for December 2020.
