A motivated project by NASA in the form of OSIRIS-REx (Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification, Security, Regolith Explorer) is expected to complete a mission by landing on an asteroid and eventually deliver samples to earth by 2016.

According to Extreme Tech, the mission was inspired by the success of Europe's Philae where it landed on a comet. OSIRIS-REx's mission also conquered another milestone when the Goddard Space Flight Center certified the project to be on track and on its scheduled mission. This confirmation led to the concrete idea of launching the mission in September 2016.

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The OSIRIS-REx is set to explore asteroids which are considered to be the time capsules in the solar system in history. Any samples gathered from these asteroids and are successfully brought back to earth will significantly contribute to the study of the universe and their impact on earth, in terms of safety and doomsday. The OSIRIS-REx is set to land on Bennu, an asteroid space rock that extends up to half kilometer in length. Asteroid Bennu is believed to have the biggest impact on earth and NASA's OSIRIS-REx will remain in it for a year to gather samples before it delivers them to earth for scientists to study and save information.

The project may seem simple, but Bennu is one asteroid that travels roughly around 60,000 miles per hour. OSIRIX-Rex, on the other hand, will have to survive doing a complete orbit around the sun before it can strategically install itself over Bennu. The year 2018 is expected for the time where the two space objects will eventually meet, while the actual retrieving of samples will take as much as 500 days to complete.

Whether Bennu is a threat or not, some of the things scientists want to know about the asteroid includes information about its actual physical appearance after the Yarkovsky Effect as well as the asteroid's composition when it comes to its elements, but mainly to implement the Touch-And-Go Sample Acquisition Mechanism (TAGSAM) it was specifically designed for.

Tagsosiris rex, Space, Osiris