NASA's Osiris-Rex all set to grab a piece of asteroid Bennu
NASA's Osiris-Rex is going to grab a piece of asteroid Bennu
In a first, NASA's van-size asteroid chaser Osiris-Rex probeis going to attempt the audacious task of grabbing a piece of asteroid Bennu.
The event marks a potential boon for science, exploration, and the comprehension of the solar system.
It can be watched live on October 20 at around 3:12 p.m. on NASA TV and will also post it on the agency's website.
The American spacecraft is going to lower itself and manoeuvre for a 'high-five' and deliver a squirt of gas to stir up the surface.
The main goal collect of the mission is to carbon samples from an asteroid, a cosmic body that may have delivered life-giving materials to our planet billions of years.
It is also expected toshed light on how to find precious resources such as water and metals in asteroids, a field that has generated increasing interest worldwide.
Thefirst-of-its-kind near-Earth asteroid mission had blasted off at 7:05 pm (23:05 GMT) atop an Atlas V rocket in Cape Canaveral, Florida on September 8, 2016.
The robot explorer has been built by Lockheed Martin to carry out the seven-year, $1 billion mission to and from the near-Earth asteroid Bennu.