Features
NASA’s OSIRIS-REx in the Midst of Site Selection
December 4, 2019 -NASA’s OSIRIS-REx mission is just days away from selecting the site where the spacecraft will snag a sample from asteroid Bennu. After a lengthy and challenging process, the team is finally ready to down-select from the four candidate...
Flyover of the Candidate Sample Sites
August 29, 2019 -This animated flyover of each of the four candidate sample collection sites on asteroid Bennu, selected by NASA’s OSIRIS-REx asteroid sample return mission, was produced using close-range data from the OSIRIS-REx Laser...
OSIRIS-REx Special Collection in Nature
March 26, 2019 -When NASA's OSIRIS-REx spacecraft arrived at asteroid Bennu on Dec. 3, 2018, it found a tiny world that in many respects was as the mission team had expected based on ground-based observations -- but the team also found that Bennu held...
NASA’s OSIRIS-REx Spacecraft Enters Orbit Around Bennu, Breaking Record
January 2, 2019 -At 2:43 p.m. EST on December 31, while many on Earth prepared to welcome the New Year, NASA’s OSIRIS-REx spacecraft, 70 million miles (110 million kilometers) away, carried out a single, eight-second burn of its thrusters – and...
TAGSAM Testing Complete: OSIRIS-REx Prepared to TAG an Asteroid
November 16, 2018 -On Nov. 14, NASA’s OSIRIS-REx spacecraft stretched out its robotic sampling arm for the first time in space. The arm, more formally known as the Touch-and-Go Sample Acquisition Mechanism (TAGSAM), is key to the spacecraft achieving the...
Behind the Scenes of REXIS: Uncovering an Instrument in Flight
November 13, 2018 -On Sept. 14, OSIRIS-REx’s REXIS instrument opened its radiation cover, as scheduled, after two years in space. The cover had been in place to protect REXIS’s charge-coupled devices (CCDs) from degradation due to radiation exposure...
Safety & Science: OSIRIS-REx on the Lookout for Hazards During Approach
October 17, 2018 -On Sept. 12, OSIRIS-REx pointed its medium-range science camera, MapCam, toward asteroid Bennu 621,000 miles (one million kilometers) in the distance. Slewing gently side to side and up and down as it captured 64 images, the spacecraft...
Two Pieces of a Cosmic Puzzle: Hayabusa2 and OSIRIS-REx
June 22, 2018 -It began with dust. Before there were asteroids, or planets, or people – about 4.6 billion years ago – a cloud of dust and gas swirled in the cosmos. At the center, a star began to form. With heat and shock waves, clumps of this...
Asteroid Bennu, as Seen from Earth
May 1, 2018 -When Asteroid Bennu was discovered on Sept. 11, 1999 by the Lincoln Near-Earth Asteroid Research project (LINEAR), it was called 1999 RQ36 -- a provisional designation assigned by the Minor Planet Center. After follow-up observations...
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