- “The spacecraft structure has been integrated with the propellant tank and propulsion system and is ready to begin system integration in the Lockheed Martin highbay,” Mike Donnelly, Osiris-Rex project manager at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center.
- Osiris-Rex is set to launch from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida in late 2016 aboard a United Launch Alliance Atlas 5. The spacecraft will arrive at the asteroid Bennu around 2018 and descend to its surface to collect at least a 60-gram sample, which the craft will return to Earth in 2023.
- Osiris-Rex was selected in 2010 as the fourth in NASA’s New Horizons series of competitively awarded, medium-size planetary science missions.
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