NASA plans a kiss-and-tell with an asteroid

The Osiris-Rex mission will barrage in 2016 and arch to the near-Earth asteroid accepted as 1999 RQ36, area it will amphitheater for about a year afore aerial bottomward and application a automatic arm to beat up cupfuls of material, which it will accompany aback for scientists to study.Asteroids are assortment from the accumulation of the solar arrangement 4.5 billion years ago. Having a bit of them to abstraction would be like accepting a glimpse into what the aboriginal solar arrangement looked like as the disc of bits about the sun began to adhere into planets, asteroids and added bodies.The mission, which NASA admiral say may amount about $800 actor (not including the barrage vehicle), is to accompany aback its sample in 2023.We batten with the University of Arizona's Michael Drake, the mission's arch investigator, to acquaint us added about the mission.So we don't accept any unequivocal, changeless samples in our laboratories. We already apperceive that amino acids abide in space, and we acquisition them in some meteorites: chipped-off asteroids that bang Earth. We accept it's the array of being that came in through the Earth's atmosphere and provided those architecture blocks afterwards aqueous oceans aboriginal formed.