TUCSON (KGUN9-TV) - The University of Arizona is leading a mission to bring back part of an asteroid.
In September 2016, a six-foot-tall rocket will launch a space probe designed and managed by the UA, on a very ambitious mission.
A spacecraft called Osiris Rex will be on its way to an asteroid named Bennu, to carefully ease in, grab a sample, and bring the sample back to Earth.
After years of design and development, UA scientists are watching technicians at Lockheed Martin turn their work into a complete spacecraft, tested and ready to go.
It's sophisticated science designed to give researchers a look at materials that date back to the earliest days of our solar system, and it's more than science, it's survival. Bennu has the potential to hit the Earth.
Osiris Rex will bring back the biggest haul of out of this world materials, since the Apollo astronauts were filling their bags with moon rocks.
Osiris Rex is such a big project it will bag a lot of money for the local economy.
It will take years to reach the asteroid and years more to analyse what it brings back.
