video: NASA's OSIRIS-REx spacecraft is on a mission to explore asteroid Bennu and return a sample to Earth. The OSIRIS-REx launch window opens on Sept. 8, 2016, when the spacecraft begins its two-year journey to Bennu aboard an Atlas V rocket at Cape Canaveral, Florida. After arriving at Bennu in 2018, OSIRIS-REx will spend over a year exploring the asteroid before approaching its surface to grab a sample. This pristine material, formed at the dawn of the solar system, will be returned to Earth in 2023, providing clues to Bennu's origins and our own.
NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, provides overall mission management, systems engineering and safety and mission assurance for OSIRIS-REx. Dante Lauretta is the missions principal investigator at the University of Arizona. Lockheed Martin Space Systems in Denver built the spacecraft. OSIRIS-REx is the third mission in NASA's New Frontiers Program. NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, manages New Frontiers for the agency's Science Mission Directorate in Washington. Official trailer for NASA's OSIRIS-REx mission to asteroid Bennu.
Credit: NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center/David Ladd, producer