Bennu

OSIRIS-REx reaches launch pad with money to spare

September 7, 2016

The scientist in charge of NASA’s OSIRIS-REx mission hopes to apply more than $30 million in leftover funding toward reducing the risk of the probe’s touch-and-go maneuver to snag a piece of asteroid Bennu, then eventually hire more experts to analyze the primordial specimens when they return to Earth in 2023.

Video: Walk around NASA’s new asteroid sample probe

August 23, 2016

Take a walk around NASA’s OSIRIS-REx spacecraft less than three weeks before its Sept. 8 launch on top of an Atlas 5 rocket. Rich Kuhns, the mission’s program manager from Lockheed Martin, points out some of the major features on the probe.

Photos: OSIRIS-REx prepped for encapsulation

August 23, 2016

NASA’s OSIRIS-REx spacecraft is about to be sealed inside the nose fairing of its Atlas 5 rocket booster for a seven-year voyage to asteroid Bennu and back to Earth on a mission to seek out clues to the origin of life and the chaotic early solar system.

One of NASA’s cleanest spacecraft ever is ready to fly

August 23, 2016

Five years after winning $1 billion from NASA to mount the first U.S. asteroid sample return mission, scientists and engineers will get their last look at the OSIRIS-REx spacecraft this week as it is closed up inside the nose cone of an Atlas 5 rocket for launch in September.

OSIRIS-REx reaches launch pad with money to spare

Video: Walk around NASA’s new asteroid sample probe

Photos: OSIRIS-REx prepped for encapsulation

One of NASA’s cleanest spacecraft ever is ready to fly

Q&A with Dante Lauretta, OSIRIS-REx principal investigator

Assembly complete for NASA’s asteroid sample return spacecraft

Bonus fuel could change OSIRIS-REx flight plan