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Mission Milestones

The OSIRIS-REx mission is the third planetary science mission selected for development in NASA's New Frontiers Program

  • Launch in September 2016, encountering asteroid (101955) Bennu in October 2018
  • Study Bennu for up to 505 days, globally mapping the surface from a distance of 5 km to a distance of 0.7 km
  • Obtain at least 60 g of pristine regolith and a surface material sample
  • Return to Earth in September 2023 in a Stardust-heritage Sample Return Capsule (SRC)
  • Deliver samples to the NASA Johnson Space Center (JSC) curation facility for world-wide distribution
© Michael Daly 2014