We take a walk around NASA’s OSIRIS-REx spacecraft before it was loaded into the nose cone of the Atlas 5 rocket that will launch it on 8 September. Rich Kuhns, the mission’s programme manager from Lockheed Martin, points out some of the major features on the probe.
Lockheed Martin built the OSIRIS-REx spacecraft and will oversee mission operators after it blasts off next month. OSIRIS-REx is the first U.S. asteroid sample return mission, and its target is asteroid Bennu.
Kuhns gave Stephen Clark, Astronomy Now and Spaceflight Now reporter, the walk-around tour inside the Payload Hazardous Servicing Facility at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center.
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Inside the magazine
Find out more about OSIRIS-REx’s mission to asteroid Bennu and back in the September issue of Astronomy Now, the UK’s biggest astronomy magazine. Get the printed magazine or download the PDF edition.