- OSIRIS-Rex spacecraft makes contact with asteroid 1999 RQ36. NASA has selected mission for launch in 2016, with samples returned to Earth in 2023. Credit: NASA
NASA has announced it has selected a New Frontiers mission – a sample-return mission dubbed OSIRIS-Rex.
OSIRIS-REx stands for Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification, Security – Regolith Explorer. The mission will be led by the University of Arizona. The spacecraft will be built by Lockheed Martin.
Scheduled for launch in 2016, the OSIRIS-REx mission will return the first samples ever taken from a special type of asteroid holding clues to the origin of the solar system and likely organic molecules that may have seeded life on Earth.
Samples from asteroid 1999 RQ36 will return to Earth in the year 2023.
OSIRIS-REx will also investigate an object potentially hazardous to humanity. 1999 RQ36 has a one-in-1,800 chance of impacting the Earth in the year 2182.
The target asteroid measures 575 meters (one-third of a mile) in diameter.
The return to Earth of pristine samples with known geologic context will enable precise analyses that cannot be duplicated by spacecraft-based instruments. Pristine carbonaceous materials have never before been analyzed in laboratories on Earth.
“The design of the OISRIS-REx spacecraft draws from the flight-proven Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter and sample return capsule of Stardust,” said Joe Vellinga, program manager for OSIRIS-REx at Lockheed Martin Space Systems Company. “This heritage brings known performance, reliability and cost to the mission,” he said in a press statement.
Lockheed Martin will design and build the OSIRIS-REx spacecraft, asteroid sampling system and the sample return capsule from its Space Systems Company facilities near Denver.
More information about the OSIRIS-REx mission can be found at:
By Leonard David
