A solid rocket motor is raised from horizontal to vertical at Space Launch Complex 41 on Florida’s Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, where it will be attached to the United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket first stage booster. With a Centaur upper stage, the rocket will boost NASA’s Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification, Security-Regolith Explorer, or OSIRIS-REx spacecraft.
Targeted for liftoff Sept. 8, 2016, OSIRIS-Rex will be the first U.S. mission to sample an asteroid, retrieve at least two ounces of surface material and return it to Earth for study. The asteroid, Bennu, may hold clues to the origin of the solar system and the source of water and organic molecules found on Earth
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Author
NASA/Kim Shiflett
Description
A solid rocket motor is raised from horizontal to vertical at Space Launch Complex 41 on Florida’s Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, where it will be attached to the United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket first stage booster. With a Centaur upper stage, the rocket will boost NASA’s Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification, Security-Regolith Explorer, or OSIRIS-REx spacecraft.
Targeted for liftoff Sept. 8, 2016, OSIRIS-Rex will be the first U.S. mission to sample an asteroid, retrieve at least two ounces of surface material and return it to Earth for study. The asteroid, Bennu, may hold clues to the origin of the solar system and the source of water and organic molecules found on Earth