How Were OSIRIS-REx and Atlas V Prepped for Flight?

NASA’s OSIRIS-REx spacecraft will be boosted into orbit aboard a United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket from Space Launch Complex 41 at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida. OSIRIS-REx stands for Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification, Security-Regolith Explorer. The U.S.’s first mission to sample an asteroid, OSIRIS-REx will travel to the near-Earth asteroid Bennu.

Learn how this pioneering spacecraft and the Atlas V were readied for flight:

NASA’s OSIRIS-REx, the first U.S. mission to collect a sample from an asteroid, delivered rocks and dust from asteroid Bennu to Earth on Sept. 24, 2023. The pristine material from Bennu – which the spacecraft collected from the asteroid's surface in 2020 – will offer generations of scientists a window into the time when the Sun and planets were forming about 4.5 billion years ago. After its sample delivery, OSIRIS-REx continued on to a new mission to asteroid Apophis, and was renamed OSIRIS-APEX (OSIRIS-Apophis Explorer). Learn more about the OSIRIS-REx mission.