Posted on Saturday, September 10, 2016
NASA's latest New Frontiers mission, OSIRIS-REx, will venture to a near-Earth asteroid to discover clues about the unique resources asteroids hold, processes that affect asteroids' orbital paths and their potential for impacting Earth, and the origins of life in the solar system. In addition, OSIRIS-REx will collect a sample from the surface of the asteroid and return it to Earth for generations of scientists to study and analyze, making this the first American asteroid sample return mission and the largest sample returned from an extraterrestrial body since Apollo.
OSIRIS-REx's was launched on September 8, 2016.
Credit: NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center/Katrina Jackson
Music credits: "Defenders of the Earth" and "Finding Gaia" by Daniel Jay Nielson [ASCAP]; Atmosphere Music Ltd PRS; Volta Music; Killer Tracks Production Music
More information: https://www.nasa.gov/osiris-rex/