NASA’s OSIRIS-REx, the spacecraft that will grab a piece of Asteroid Bennu and return it to Earth, shipped to Kennedy Space Center from the Lockheed Martin production facilities in Denver on May 20 aboard an Air Force C-17.
Equipped with a robot arm, sample collector and return capsule, NASA’s asteroid-bound OSIRIS-REx probe emerged from its pristine factory and flew to the launch site in Florida on Friday.
The revised Atlas 5 rocket firing order includes two national security missions this summer before launching NASA’s daring asteroid sampler mission in September as originally planned.
Some of America’s most critical surveillance satellites, final members of other spacecraft series and a probe that will touch an asteroid are among 15 rocket flights planned by United Launch Alliance in 2016.
NASA’s first asteroid-sampling probe, OSIRIS-REx, has been assembled at a Lockheed Martin satellite factory in Colorado and is now being tested to ensure it can withstand the harsh journey to an asteroid and back.
A NASA spacecraft under construction for launch in 2016 to retrieve samples from asteroid Bennu could benefit from an extra load of fuel, allowing an extended stay at the asteroid or a return to Earth a year early.
Scientists from the United States and Japan plan to share asteroid specimens from the OSIRIS-REx and Hayabusa 2 sample return missions under an agreement signed by NASA and the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency.