NASA OSIRIS-REx: Spacecraft that will visit asteroid in 2018

This is an artist's concept of NASA's OSIRIS-REx spacecraft preparing to take a sample from asteroid Bennu. 

Credit: NASA/Goddard

NASA has given the OSIRIS-REx mission, led by the University of Arizona, the go-ahead to begin building the spacecraft, flight instruments, ground system and launch support facilities.

OSIRIS-REx is the first U.S. mission slated to send a spacecraft to a near-Earth asteroid and collect samples.

The mission will focus on finding answers to basic questions about the composition of the very early solar system and the source of organic materials and water that made life possible on Earth.

It will also aid NASA's asteroid initiative and support the agency's efforts to understand the population of potentially hazardous near-Earth objects and characterize those suitable for future asteroid exploration missions.

The UA got the thumbs up on April 9 after a successful Mission Critical Design Review (CDR) for NASA's Origins Spectral Interpretation Resource Identification Security Regolith Explorer (OSIRIS-REx).

The review was held at the Lockheed Martin Space Systems Company in Littleton, Colo., April 1-9. An independent review board, comprised of experts from NASA and several external organizations, met to review the system design.

"Successfully passing mission CDR is a major accomplishment, but the hard part is still in front of us—building, integrating and testing the flight system to meet our tight launch window," said Mike Donnelly, OSIRIS-REx project manager at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md.

"It marks a major shift in our mission," said Ed Beshore, a scientist at the UA Lunar and Planetary Laboratory and the Department of Astronomy and Steward Observatory, who is the mission's deputy principal investigator.

"For all of us involved with OSIRIS-REx, it is a transition from designing the mission to implementing it. It means we are now cutting metal, building a spacecraft and writing software."

OSIRIS-REx is scheduled to launch in the fall of 2016, rendezvous with the asteroid Bennu in 2018 and spend a year studying the asteroid before collecting a sample of at least 2 ounces (60 grams) of surface material and returning it to Earth for scientists to study in 2023.

NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center will provide overall mission management, systems engineering and safety and mission oversight for OSIRIS-REx. The UA will lead the effort, provide the camera system and science processing and operations center.

Lockheed Martin Space Systems in Denver will build the spacecraft. OSIRIS-REx is the third mission in NASA's New Frontiers Program, which is managed by the Marshall Spaceflight Center.