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NASA Chasing Down Asteroid To Scoop Up, Bring Back Samples
Expected to arrive at the asteroid by 2018, the OSIRIS-REx will return to Earth in 2023 as NASA’s debut mission in bringing asteroid samples.
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The Osiris-Rex launch was set for between 7:05 p.m. and 9:05 p.m. on Thursday (2305 to 0105 GMT on Friday).
Osiris-Rex should reach its destination, a dark rocky mass shaped-like a giant acorn, orbiting the sun at roughly the same distance as Earth, within two years.
OSIRIS-REx will deliver this sample to Earth in September 2023. Scientists want at least 2 ounces (60 grams).
“We got everything just exactly ideal”, Lauretta, who’s based at the University of Arizona’s Lunar and Planetary Laboratory (LPL), said during a postlaunch news conference Thursday night from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center. “We’re going to learn so much about the solar system from studying this asteroid and getting a sample back”.
“These treasures we get on our sample-return missions are a legacy for science, which goes far beyond the mission”, Grossman told ABC News.
A packed house at ASU’s Marston Exploration theater watched the successful launch of the OSIRIS-REx spacecraft. NASA expects it to land in Utah, and scientists can begin studying the sample.
But OSIRIS-REx won’t land. -NASA has successfully launched a groundbreaking mission to rendezvous with asteroid Bennu-a small, but unpredictable asteroid that could hold the secrets to life in our solar system. If one of those asteroids brought the organic material which provided the ingredients for life here on Earth, that not only will change our understanding of this planet, but it will change our views of the probability of life on other planets as well.
OSIRIS-REx, which is short for Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification, Security-Regolith Explorer, is headed to the near-Earth asteroid called Bennu.
The mission is the first time NASA has sent a craft to make contact with an asteroid.
The asteroid Bennu, discovered by the LINEAR Project back in 1999 is listed as the third highest rated object with a 1 in 2700 chance of impacting Earth in the 22 century has been a potential target for sampling.
Though OSIRIS-REx has many exciting milestones ahead, its next two years will be spent traveling.
“We’re going to an asteroid that represents the first building blocks of the planets in our solar system”, said Lauretta.
“We’re not talking about an asteroid that could destroy the Earth”, explained chief scientist Dante Lauretta. The estimated cost of the mission is more than 800 million dollars (£600 million).
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The name Bennu comes from a heron of Egyptian mythology.