- NASA launch for OSIRIS-REx mission
- 1st US mission to sample an asteroid
- Mission will help in search for origins of life
- RELATED: Upcoming Space Coast launch schedule
OSIRIS-REx was lifted up on an Atlas V rocket from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in a textbook launch with a lovely evening for viewing.
It's a big mission for a small sample: The spacecraft is heading about 750,000 miles into space to one of several thousand near-Earth asteroids. Asteroid Bennu was selected by NASA because it's not too far from Earth and because of the asteroid's size. Bennu is 500 meters across, which is about the size of a small mountain.
Smaller asteroids tend to spin quicker and can throw any loose debris from its surface.
"About one year after launch, and going around the sun once, we will do a gravity assist and change the plane of the spacecraft, put it in the same plane as Asteroid Bennu," said Michael Donnelly, OSIRIS-REx project manager.
OSIRIS-REx will arrive at Bennu in August 2018, about two years after launch.
"We believe that the composition of the asteroid has perhaps organic material, it has perhaps a significant amount of water, those are the things that were delivered to Earth early on," said Jim Green, NASA's planetary division director.
The critical moments won't happen for two more years, though. In July 2020, the spacecraft's 10-foot-long arm will dip down and, for just three seconds, bounce off Bennu's surface to collect a couple of ounces as a sample.
"We have great science ahead of us," said Dante Lauretta, principal investigator of OSIRIS-REx. "I'm really excited to get to this milestone, launched to its journey to Bennu and back."
The spacecraft is scheduled to return home in September 2023. The sample will be delivered to scientists.