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OSIRIS-REx Mission Prepares for Launch


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NASA’s OSIRIS-REx Mission Passes Critical Milestone

NASA's groundbreaking science mission to retrieve a sample from an ancient space rock has moved closer to fruition. The Origins Spectral Interpretation Resource Identification Security Regolith Explorer (OSIRIS-REx) mission has passed a critical milestone in its path towards launch and is officially authorized to transition into its next phase.

Key Decision Point-D (KDP-D) occurs after the project has completed a series of independent reviews that cover the technical health, schedule and cost of the project. The milestone represents the official transition from the mission’s development stage to delivery of systems, testing and integration leading to launch. During this part of the mission’s life cycle, known as Phase D, the spacecraft bus, or the structure that will carry the science instruments, is completed, the instruments are integrated into the spacecraft and tested, and the spacecraft is shipped to NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida for integration with the rocket.

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OSIRIS-REx Team Prepares for Next Step in NASA’s Asteroid Sample Return Mission

With launch only 15 months away, NASA’s Origins Spectral Interpretation Resource Identification Security-Regolith Explorer (OSIRIS-REx) team is preparing to deliver instruments for integration with the spacecraft that will travel to, and collect a sample from, an asteroid.

“This is an exciting time for the project,” said Mike Donnelly, OSIRIS-REx project manager from NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. “Years of effort are coming to culmination with the upcoming deliveries of the instruments to the spacecraft.”

OSIRIS-REx will travel to a near-Earth asteroid called Bennu and bring a small sample back to Earth for study. The mission is scheduled for launch in September 2016. The spacecraft will reach its asteroid target in 2018 and return a sample to Earth in 2023.

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NASA’s OSIRIS-REx Spacecraft Begins Environmental Testing

NASA’s Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification, Security-Regolith Explorer (OSIRIS-REx) mission is undergoing environmental testing at Lockheed Martin Space Systems facilities, near Denver, Colorado. OSIRIS-REx will be the first U.S. mission to return samples from an asteroid to Earth for further study.

"OSIRIS-REx is entering environmental testing on schedule, on budget and with schedule reserves," said Mike Donnelly, OSIRIS-REx project manager at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. "This allows us to have flexibility if any concerns arise during final launch preparations."

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Student-Built Experiment Integrated onto NASA’s OSIRIS-REx Mission

A student-built experiment aboard NASA’s Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification, Security-Regolith Explorer (OSIRIS-REx) mission has been integrated onto the spacecraft.

The Regolith X-ray Imaging Spectrometer (REXIS) will determine elemental abundances on the surface of asteroid Bennu, complementing the mineral and chemical mapping capabilities provided by two other instruments on the spacecraft.

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NASA's OSIRIS-REx Spacecraft In Thermal Vacuum Testing

The first U.S. mission to collect a sample of an asteroid and return it to Earth for study is undergoing a major milestone in its environmental testing.

NASA’s Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification, Security-Regolith Explorer (OSIRIS-REx) spacecraft is in thermal vacuum testing, designed to simulate the harsh environment of space and see how the spacecraft and its instruments operate under ‘flight-like’ conditions.

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NASA’s OSIRIS-REx Gears up for 3-D Mapping on the Fly

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Scheduled for launch on Sept. 8, NASA’s OSIRIS-REx mission will travel to an asteroid, study it and return a sample to Earth for analysis. All of these goals depend on accurate mapping of the target, Bennu, so the team is gearing up for the challenges of cartography of an asteroid.

“Mapping of Bennu is necessary, of course, but it’s also an exciting and technically interesting aspect of the mission,” said Ed Beshore, OSIRIS-REx deputy principal investigator at the University of Arizona in Tucson. The mission is managed by NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland.

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NASA Instrument to Use X-Rays to Map an Asteroid

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NASA's OSIRIS-REx spacecraft will launch September 2016 and travel to the near-Earth asteroid Bennu to harvest a sample of surface material and return it to Earth for study. But before the science team selects a sample site, they can find out a bit about Bennu's elemental make-up.

To determine the composition of Bennu's surface, the Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification, Security-Regolith Explorer (OSIRIS-REx) team equipped the spacecraft with an instrument that will identify which elements are present on the asteroid and measure their abundance.

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NASA to Map the Surface of an Asteroid

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NASA’s OSIRIS-REx spacecraft will launch September 2016 and travel to a near-Earth asteroid known as Bennu to harvest a sample of surface material and return it to Earth for study. The science team will be looking for something special. Ideally, the sample will come from a region in which the building blocks of life may be found.

To identify these regions on Bennu, the Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification, Security-Regolith Explorer (OSIRIS-REx) team equipped the spacecraft with an instrument that will measure the spectral signatures of Bennu’s mineralogical and molecular components.

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NASA to Map Asteroid Bennu from the Ground Up

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How do you study the topography of an asteroid millions of miles away? Map it with a robotic cartographer!

NASA’s Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification, Security-Regolith Explorer, or OSIRIS-REx, will launch in September 2016 and travel to a near-Earth asteroid known as Bennu to harvest a sample of surface material and return it to Earth for study. But before the science team can select a sample site, it needs to know a little something about the asteroid’s topography.

The OSIRIS-REx Laser Altimeter, or OLA, is provided by the Canadian Space Agency and will be used to create three-dimensional global topographic maps of Bennu and local maps of candidate sample sites.

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