Jun 25, 2018

On June 19, the Science Operations and Planning Group (SOPG) held the tactical kickoff for the first week of Approach Phase, which commences August 17. This means that the day-to-day operational planning of the mission’s Bennu science operations has begun.

This week the OSIRIS-REx mission team has also been enthusiastically watching our JAXA partner mission, Hayabusa2, return its first images of the asteroid Ryugu. In these images, Ryugu has shown itself to be shaped remarkably similarly to what Bennu is expected to look like. OSIRIS-REx and Hayabusa2 are working collaboratively on their respective asteroid sample return missions to reduce risk and increase the science knowledge obtained.