WIKIARCHIVES.SPACE

The Centaur upper stage of a United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket arrives at the Atlas Spaceflight Operations Center at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida. The launch vehicle will boost the Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification, Security--Regolith Explorer, or OSIRIS-REx spacecraft. Targeted for liftoff Sept. 8, 2016, OSIRIS-Rex will be the first U.S. mission to sample an asteroid, retrieve at least two ounces of surface material and return it to Earth for study. The asteroid, Bennu, may hold clues to the origin of the solar system and the source of water and organic molecules found on Earth