15 Aug 2016

A Canadian laser will make a 3D map of an asteroid and sleuth out the best sample site for NASA's OSIRIS-REx mission

Canada, say "OLA" to an asteroid
Launch: Scheduled for September 8, 2016, at 7:05 p.m. EDT (4:05 p.m. PDT) aboard an Atlas V rocket at the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, Florida. The mission has a 34-day launch window.
Status: Awaiting launch

Overview
The Canadian Space Agency (CSA) is collaborating with NASA on OSIRIS-REx, the first USmission to return a sample from an asteroid to Earth. The mission will help answer fundamental questions about how our solar system formed, how life began and how we can avoid asteroid impacts with Earth. OSIRIS-REx (short for Origins-Spectral Interpretation-Resource Identification-Security-Regolith Explorer) will also give us a better understanding of one of the most potentially hazardous asteroids currently known to humanity. OSIRIS-REx also marks the first time the CSA is part of an international sample-return mission.

OSIRIS-REx will take about two years to zero in on its target—the asteroid Bennu. The spacecraft will carry five science instruments that will map the asteroid in visible, infrared and x-ray wavelengths, with the Canadian instrument, OLA (short for the OSIRIS-REx Laser Altimeter), measuring its surface materials and topography. When OSIRIS-REx reaches Bennu in 2018, OLAwill spend six months mapping the entire surface to learn more about the asteroid's history, composition and morphology. Mission scientists will then use this information to choose a location for the spacecraft to sample. OSIRIS-REx will lower itself down towards the surface and—without landing—extend its robotic arm and use a Touch-and-Go Sampler to grasp over 60 g of fine gravel, dust and surface material (known as regolith). The sample-return capsule will then make its way back to Earth, touching down in the desert of Utah in 2023.

The OSIRIS-REx mission is led by Principal Investigator Dr. Dante S. Lauretta of the University of Arizona and supported by a science team of co-investigators, with project management at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center. The spacecraft was built by Lockheed Martin Space Systems.