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

From: Ron Baalke <baalke_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Mon, 5 Aug 2013 15:13:14 -0700 (PDT)
Message-ID: <201308052213.r75MDEuZ013872_at_zagami.jpl.nasa.gov>

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

-end-
Received on Mon 05 Aug 2013 06:13:14 PM PDT


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