Displaying items by tag: OSIRIS REx spacecraft

OSIRIS-REx (NASA's Origins Spectral Interpretation Resource Identification Security Regolith Explorer) is a planned asteroid study and sample return mission.

It is a planetary science mission, the third selected in the New Frontiers Program, after Juno and New Horizons. The mission is planned for a 2016 launch and will study and return a sample of asteroid 101955 Bennu (formerly designated 1999 RQ36), a carbonaceous asteroid, to Earth for detailed analyses in 2023. Material returned is expected to enable scientists to learn more about the time before the formation and evolution of the Solar System, initial stages of planet formation, and the source of organic compounds which led to the formation of life.