NASA’s “OSIRIS-REx Mission”

Why in news?

• NASA’s OSIRIS-REx Mission will depart from asteroid Bennu and start its two-year-long journey back to Earth.

OSIRIS-REx Mission:

• OSIRIS-REx stands for Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification, Security, Regolith Explorer.
• The mission was launched in 2016. It was the first U.S. mission to successfully collect a sample from an asteroid.
• Aim: To travel to a near-Earth asteroid named Bennu and bring a small sample back to Earth for study.

Asteroid Bennu:

• Asteroid Bennu is named after an Egyptian deity. It is as tall as the Empire State Building. It is located about 200 million miles away from the Earth.
• The asteroid was discovered by a team from the NASA-funded Lincoln Near-Earth Asteroid Research team in 1999.