The shipping container holding NASA’s OSIRIS-REx spacecraft is unloaded from an Air Force C-17 cargo aircraft after landing on the Shuttle Landing Facility runway at Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The spacecraft traveled from Lockheed Martin’s facility near Denver, Colorado to Kennedy to begin processing for its upcoming launch, targeted for Sept. 8 aboard a United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket. OSIRIS-REx stands for Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification, Security – Regolith Explorer. This will be the first U.S. mission to sample an asteroid, retrieve at least two ounces of surface material and return it to Earth for study. The asteroid, Bennu, may hold clues to the origin of the solar system and the source of water and organic molecules found on Earth.
Photo credit: NASA/Bill White