NASA gave the go-ahead to start construction of the first asteroid-bound spacecraft on Wednesday, which is scheduled to launch from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida during the Fall of 2016.
OSIRIS-REx will land on an asteroid named Bennu, which comes close to Earth in 2018. The spacecraft will spend a year exploring the asteroid, and will bring about two ounces of soil samples back to Earth.
See also: Solar Flare Captured in Stunning NASA Video
Dante Lauretta, a planetary science professor at the University of Arizona who is serving as principal investigator for the mission, told Mashable that there has already been a decade's worth of planning just to get to the point where they were ready to build the spacecraft, and that the timeline from here on out is "perfect." Read more...
More about Us World, Us, and Space Reported by Mashable 27 minutes ago.
OSIRIS-REx will land on an asteroid named Bennu, which comes close to Earth in 2018. The spacecraft will spend a year exploring the asteroid, and will bring about two ounces of soil samples back to Earth.
See also: Solar Flare Captured in Stunning NASA Video
Dante Lauretta, a planetary science professor at the University of Arizona who is serving as principal investigator for the mission, told Mashable that there has already been a decade's worth of planning just to get to the point where they were ready to build the spacecraft, and that the timeline from here on out is "perfect." Read more...
More about Us World, Us, and Space Reported by Mashable 27 minutes ago.