Osiris-Rex: Chasing Asteroid Bennu
NASA’s latest New Frontiers mission, OSIRIS-REx, will venture to a near-Earth asteroid to discover clues about the unique resources asteroids hold, processes that affect asteroids’ orbital paths and their potential for impacting Earth, and the origins of life in the solar system. In addition, OSIRIS-REx will collect a sample from the surface of the asteroid and return it to Earth for generations of scientists to study and analyze, making this the first American asteroid sample return mission and the largest sample returned from an extraterrestrial body since Apollo.
OSIRIS-REx’s launch window opens September 8, 2016.
Source:
Read more: engadget.com & New York Times
– Asteroid Mining
– NASA
– Space Future
– Spaceships & Rockets
