NASA Spacecraft Arrives at Asteroid After Two Year Journey
via The Verge
OSIRIS-REx launched on top of an Atlas V rocket in September 2016, and it has been hurtling through space ever since. The spacecraft’s mission is relatively straightforward: meet up with an asteroid, scoop up some rocks off of its surface, and then come back to Earth. Known as an asteroid sample return, this kind of mission is exciting for scientists since studying the materials from an asteroid in depth could tell us a great deal about how our Solar System came to be 4.5 billion years ago.