[meteorite-list] NASA Selects Launch Services Contract for OSIRIS-REx Mission

[Ron Baalke]

August 5, 2013

Joshua Buck
Headquarters, Washington
202-358-1100
jbuck at nasa.gov 

George Diller
Kennedy Space Center, Fla.
321-867-2468
george.h.diller at nasa.gov 

CONTRACT RELEASE C13-035

NASA Selects Launch Services Contract for OSIRIS-REx Mission

NASA has selected United Launch Services LLC of Englewood, Colo. to launch  
the Origins-Spectral Interpretation-Resource Identification-Security-Regolith  
Explorer (OSIRIS-REx) spacecraft.

The OSIRIS-REx mission is scheduled to launch in September 2016 aboard an  
Atlas V rocket from Space Launch Complex 41 at Cape Canaveral Air Force  
Station, Fla.

This new firm-fixed price, indefinite-delivery, indefinite-quantity, launch  
service task order contract is valued at about $183.5 million. This price  
includes payload processing, integrated services, telemetry and other launch  
support requirements.

OSIRIS-REx will survey near-Earth asteroid 101955 Bennu to understand its  
physical, mineralogical and chemical properties; assess its resource  
potential; refine the impact hazard; and return a sample to Earth. The  
spacecraft will rendezvous with the asteroid in 2018. Sample return is  
planned in 2023. Analysis of the sample returned will reveal the earliest  
stages of the solar system's evolution and the history of Bennu over the past  
4.5 billion years.

OSIRIS-REx also will study the Yarkovsky effect, a non-gravitational force  
affecting the orbit of this potentially hazardous asteroid, and provide the  
first direct measurements for telescopic observations of this type of  
asteroids.

NASA's Launch Services Program at the agency's Kennedy Space Center in  
Florida is responsible for program management of the Atlas V launch vehicle.  
NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., provides overall  
mission management for OSIRIS-REx.

For more information about NASA programs and missions, visit:

http://www.nasa.gov 

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