NASA Goes Asteroid Hunting with "OSIRIS-ReX" Spacecraft

In case NASA's achievements this year are not enough, they will be manning another milestone this year, and that is their mission to collect bits of an asteroid using the OSIRIS-ReX spacecraft.

NASA recently announced that the mission will be launched in September this year. The -Spectral Interpretation-Resource Identification-Security-Regolith Explorer (OSIRIS-Rex) will use robotic arms to collect asteroid samples. The samples collected will be brought back to Earth for further testing.

The agency said the mission will be launched this year aiming at their target asteroid near Earth called the 1999 RQ36. They are expecting the spacecraft to reach the target in 2018 after a 3-year journey.

OSIRIS-ReX spacecraft was built by Lockheed Martin according to a news report by Inverse. The spacecraft just arrived at the Kennedy Space Center from Colorado for its final preparation before the launch of its mission this September. "It was an amazing day, very emotional," said Dante Lauretta, principal investigator of OSIRIS-Rex in an interview with the Orlando Sentinel. "I've been working on the project for 12 years" Lauretta added.

The mission will include asteroid surface mapping, which ORISIS-ReX will be able to perform only when its distance to the asteroid is a minimum of three miles. Then just like in the movies, the robotic arms of the spacecraft will move closer to the asteroid to collect samples. According to NASA, the size of the target asteroid is about six football fields. Once the mission is completed, the spacecraft if expected to arrive back on Earth in 2023.

"The asteroid, little altered over time, is likely to represent a snapshot of our solar system's infancy. The asteroid also is likely rich in carbon, a key element in the organic molecules necessary for life" said Dr. Dante Lauretta, from the University of Arizona, is OSIRIS-REx's principal investigator in a statement. NASA scientists believe that the 'ingredients' of life such as organic molecules found in meteorites and comet samples may also be present in asteroids.