Tag: Bennu
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One of NASA’s cleanest spacecraft ever is ready to fly
A member of the OSIRIS-REx team prepares the spacecraft for launch Sept. 8. The Atlas 5 rocket’s payload fairing is in the background. Credit: Ben Cooper/Launchphotography.com Five years after winning $1 billion from NASA to mount the first U.S. asteroid sample return mission, scientists and engineers will get their last look at the OSIRIS-REx spacecraft…
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Photos: OSIRIS-REx prepped for encapsulation
NASA’s OSIRIS-REx spacecraft is about to be sealed inside the nose fairing of its Atlas 5 rocket booster for a seven-year voyage to asteroid Bennu and back to Earth on a mission to seek out clues to the origin of life and the chaotic early solar system. The solar-powered, 4,651-pound (2,110-kilogram) spacecraft is inside the…
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Video: Walk around NASA’s new asteroid sample probe
Take a walk around NASA’s OSIRIS-REx spacecraft less than three weeks before its Sept. 8 launch on top of an Atlas 5 rocket. Rich Kuhns, the mission’s program manager from Lockheed Martin, points out some of the major features on the probe. Lockheed Martin built the OSIRIS-REx spacecraft and will oversee mission operators after it…
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Assembly complete for NASA’s asteroid sample return spacecraft
Technicians recently installed OSIRIS-REx’s solar panels and high-gain antenna. Credit: Lockheed Martin NASA’s first asteroid-sampling probe, OSIRIS-REx, has been assembled at a Lockheed Martin satellite factory in Colorado and is now being tested to ensure it can withstand the harsh journey to an asteroid and back. The OSIRIS-REx spacecraft is now set for a sequence…
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Bonus fuel could change OSIRIS-REx flight plan
The OSIRIS-REx mission’s main hydrazine tank was integrated with the spacecraft’s structure at Lockheed Martin’s Denver facility in December 2014. Credit: NASA/Lockheed Martin A NASA spacecraft under construction for launch in 2016 to retrieve samples from asteroid Bennu could benefit from an extra load of fuel, allowing an extended stay at the asteroid or a…