structure of NASA’sOSIRIS - RExspacecraft – which will launch next year on a mission to riposte an asteroid sample to Earth – hasbeen completed . It has now moved into the environmental test phase , where it will be subjected to a number of trials that imitate the rigors of spacefaring , ahead of its journey to the potentially hazardous asteroid Bennu beginning next year .
“ This milestone marks the end of the design and assembly stage , ” said Dante Lauretta , chief investigator for OSIRIS - REx at the University of Arizona , Tucson in astatement . “ We now move on to test the entire flight system over the range of environmental conditions that will be experienced on the journeying to Bennu and back . This phase is critical to mission success , and I am positive that we have built the correct scheme for the job . ”
OSIRIS - REx ( Origins , Spectral Interpretation , Resource Identification , Security , Regolith Explorer ) , build by Lockheed Martin , willlaunchin September 2016 on an Atlas V Eruca sativa and arrive at Bennu in 2018 . There , using a robotic arm and bursts of nitrogen gaseous state , it will compile a sample of between 60 grams and 2 kilograms ( 0.13 and 4.4 pound ) , the biggest ever for a automatonlike mission . The sample will be returned to Earth in 2023 – the largest sample distribution recall to Earth since the Apollo deputation – and will be learn by scientists to learn more about the early Solar System .
Testing of the space vehicle will take place over the next five months at a Lockheed Martin testing facility in Denver , hopefully giving the squad enough meter to accost any issues if they come up . The simulation will also see how the space vehicle copes with the passing raging and cold temperatures it will have on its way to Bennu . The asteroid has a slightly elliptical reach that takes it from 0.897 to 1.356 AU ( 1 AU , astronomical social unit , is the distance from the Earth to the Sun ) .
As the asteroid is believed to be a remnant of the early Solar System , it ’s hoped that it could hold up clues as to how water supply and organic molecules came to Earth . What the mission watch could also be utilitarian in future endeavors to avert an Earth - reverberate asteroid , if we needed to . Bennu itself has just a 0.04 % hazard of hitting Earth , so there ’s no motivation to panic just yet .
