Asteroid Bound Spacecraft - OSIRIS-REx Mission

Mission Overview:

     NASA asteroid sample return mission, OSIRIS-Rex (origin, spectral interpretation, resource, Identification, and security - Regolith Explorer) will pass about 17,000 kilometers above the Earth on 22nd Friday 2017. Using Earth as a singleshot, the spacecraft will receive an assist to complete its journey to the asteroid Bennu.

OSIRIS-REx mission is to investigate the near earth asteroid to study the surface, collect samples and bring safely to the Earth. This is the first National Aeronautics Space Administration (NASA's) asteroid sample return mission. Now the spacecraft is on the half way to the Bennu asteroid and the mission duration is 2 years.

Start of Mission:

     The OSIRIS-REx mission was officially begins after the successful launch on 8th September 2016. The largest was a deep space maneuver on 28th December 2016, that extremely changed the speed and path of the spacecraft to the target Earth for the flyby. There have also been three trajectory correction maneuvers - one on 7th October 2016 and another on 18th January 2017 and the last on 23 August 2017 - thirty days before the gravity assist - that further refined spacecraft's trajectory in preparation for the flyby.

Mission Management:

    NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center provides overall mission management, systems engineering and the safety and mission assurance for OSIRIS-REx. Dante Lauretta of the University of Arizona, Tucson is the principal investigator, and the University of Arizona also leads the science team and the mission science observation planning and data processing Lockheed Martin Space Systems in Denver built the spacecraft and is providing flight operations. Goddard and KinetX Aerospace are responsible for navigating the OSIRIS-REx spacecraft. OSIRIS-REx is the third mission in NASA's New Frontiers Program. NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, manages the agency's new frontiers program for its Science Mission Directorate in Washington.

More Information:

• To know more about OSIRIS-REx Mission http://www.nasa.gov/osiris-rex
• To Know about Goddard Space Flight Center http://www.nasa.gov/goddard

Credits: Text and Image Credit : National Aeronautics Space Administration