The United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket carrying NASA’s OSIRIS-REx asteroid sample-return mission spacecraft lifts off from Space Launch Complex 41 at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida on September 8, 2016.
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The Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification, Security-Regolith Explorer (OSIRIS-REx) spacecraft lifted off at 7:05 p.m. EDT Thursday from Cape Canaveral on top of a United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket. Osiris-Rex will return to orbit the Earth, releasing the sample to return to the planet by parachute to a Utah landing site in December 2020.
With the data collected by OSIRIS-REx, scientists hope to improve man’s understanding of asteroid behaviors and the early formation of the Solar System. Bennu is a rare B-type asteroid and ich is expected to have organic compounds and water-bearing minerals like clays.
To capture the dust sample on the surface, the space craft will “kiss” the asteroid with a robotic arm, gently touching the surface.
In case everything goes as planned then OSIRIS-REx will meet Bennu, a 1,640-foot-wide asteroid, in August 2018, collect some dirt and pieces off the space rock a couple of years later and bring back home the cosmic sample in September 2023.
The rocket will return to Earth in 2023.
“You can think of these asteroids as literally prebiotic chemical factories that were producing building blocks of life 4.5 billion years ago, before Earth formed, before life started here”, NASA astrobiologist Daniel Glavin said.
Image: Nasa’s OSIRIS-REx spacecraft was successfully launched from Cape Canaveral, Florida. NASA will save about 75 percent of the sample for generations of scientists to come.
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The U.S. space agency also hopes Osiris-Rex will demonstrate the advanced imaging and mapping techniques needed for future science missions and for upcoming commercial asteroid-mining expeditions. NASA estimates that there is a one-in-2,700 chance that Bennu might hit Earth sometime between 2175 and 2199. This Carbon-rich asteroid will fly remarkably close to Earth in the year 2135-closer to Earth than the Moon-and therefore creating a scientific imperative for NASA to study its movement and the movement of other asteroids.
