NASA will launch a sample-return mission to an asteroid in 2016, agency officials announced today (May 25).
The mission, called Origins-Spectral Interpretation-Resource Identification-Security-Regolith Explorer (OSIRIS-Rex) will use a robotic arm to pluck samples from an asteroid. These bits of space rock will later be returned to Earth, where scientists will study them for information about the solar system's origin and, possibly, clues to how life may have begun, NASA officials said in a statement.
The $800 million OSIRIS-Rex will be the United States' first asteroid sample-return effort and only the second mission in history to retrieve samples from an asteroid. Japan's Hayabusa spacecraft successfully returned pieces of the asteroid Itokawa to Earth in June 2010.
"This is a critical step in meeting the objectives outlined by President Obama to extend our reach beyond low-Earth orbit and explore into deep space," NASA Administrator Charlie Bolden said in a statement. "It's robotic missions like these that will pave the way for future human space missions to an asteroid and other deep space destinations."
A long journey to an asteroid
NASA selected OSIRIS-REx after reviewing three concept studies for new scientific missions, which also included a sample return mission from the far side of the moon and a mission to the surface of Venus.
http://www.space.com/11788-nasa-asteroid-mission-osiris-rex-1999-rq36.html
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