MECO-2! Centaur Completes Final Burn

The Centaur’s RL-10 engine has cut off for the second and final time. OSIRIS-REx will remain attached for another 15 minutes before it is released at about 8:04 p.m. EDT.

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.