ORLANDO, Fla. — The OSIRIS-REx spacecraft lifted off from Florida’s Space Coast as planned at 7:05 p.m. EDT, headed to Bennu, an asteroid where it will collect a sample years from now. It will then attempt a return to Earth.
ORLANDO, Fla. — The OSIRIS-REx spacecraft lifted off from Florida’s Space Coast as planned at 7:05 p.m. EDT, headed to Bennu, an asteroid where it will collect a sample years from now. It will then attempt a return to Earth.
The United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket had been cleared for launch with very little weather issues, a 90 percent probability.
OSRIS-REx is on a seven-year mission to recover dirt from Bennu, an endeavor researchers say will reveal more about Earth’s origins.
The spacecraft should reach Bennu in 2018, then research the asteroid while coordinating its path to allow for a five-second landing scheduled for July 4, 2020.
OSIRIS-REx will collect at least 2.1 ounces of dust on Bennu, which at 500 meters across has been compared to the size of a small mountain.
If all goes as planned, OSIRIS will return to Earth on Sept. 24, 2023, giving scientists firsthand knowledge of the asteroid.
A University of Central Florida researcher who helped develop some of the systems said earlier Thursday that he has been under a “nervous calm” in anticipation of tonight’s OSIRIS-REx launch from Florida.
Humberto Campin, who is part of the OSIRIS-REx science team, spent the night on the coast as he prepared for the launch.
“It’s all out of my hands now,” said Humberto Campins, part of the OSIRIS-REx science team. “It’s in the hand of people who are specially trained for that. It’s a nervous calm because there is not much more I can do.”
Campins said earlier this week that he expects Bennu to be rich in organic, undisturbed molecules.
“If we can understand what the inventory of building blocks was before life formed, we could have a better idea of how it can exist elsewhere.” Campins said. “Every piece of the asteroid tells a different story.”
OSIRIS REx stands for Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification, Security, and Regolith Explorer.
Scientists selected Bennu in 2008 for the mission because it met several criteria — flight-path stability and proximity to Earth, size and speed of rotation, and an unaltered, carbon-rich composition.
University of Arizona professor Dante Lauretta, principal investigator on OSIRIS-REx, started tracking Bennu in 1999.
He said the mission to Bennu means “great science ahead of us.”
“We are going out into the unknown,” he said. “Bennu is an unexplored world.”
