OSIRIS-REx Mission NASA

ASTEROID SAMPLE RETURN MISSION:

     NASA's asteroid sample return mission, OSIRIS-REx (Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification, and security - Regolith Explorer), passed about 17,000 kilometers above Earth just before 12:52 p.m EDT on Friday, September 22. Using Earth as single shot, the spacecraft will receive an assist to complete its journey to the asteroid Bennu.

BENNU ASTEROID:

     OSIRIS-REx is undertaking a challenging mission to visit the near Earth asteroid, survey the surface collect samples and deliver them safely back to Earth. This is the first NASA mission to attempt such an undertaking. The spacecraft is halfway through its two-year outbound journey, and now OSIRIS-REx needs an extra boost to successfully rendezvous with Bennu asteroid.

ASTEROID ORBIT:

     Bennu orbit around the Sun is titled six degrees in comparison to Earth's. The gravity assist will change OSIRIS-REx's trajectory to put the spacecraft on a course to match the asteroid's path and speed.

GRAVITY ASSIST:

     The Earth gravity Assist is a clever way to move the spacecraft onto Bennu's orbital plane using Earth's own Gravity instead of expending fuel, said Dante Lauretta, OSIRIS-REx principal investigator at the University of Arizona, Tucson.

     The team has already made multiple adjustments to the spacecraft's path since launch on September 8, 2016. The largest was a deep space maneuver on 28 December 2016, that changed the speed and path of the spacecraft to target Earth for the flyby. There have also been three trajectory correction maneuvers - one on 7 October 2016, one on 18 January 2017, and another on 23 August 2017 (30 days before the gravity assist)- that further refined the spacecraft trajectory in preparation for the flyby.

Text Credit : NASA by Jordan Rice

Image Credit : NASA Image Archieve

More Information on OSIRIS-REx Mission available at www,nasa,gov/osiris-rex