On Tuesday, September 23 at 1:00 p.m. EDT, NASA’s OSIRIS-APEX (Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification and Security – Apophis Explorer) spacecraft flew within 2,136 miles (3,438 kilometers) of Earth.
During the approach and as Osiris-Apex passed Earth, it looked home, capturing images and data of our home planet to help calibrate its science instruments.
During the spacecraft’s primary mission, the StoveCam instrument was used to verify that the capsule filled with samples from asteroid Bennu was safely stored and ready for return to Earth. Now, StoveCam provides a view of the instrument panel, including the OSIRIS-REx laser altimeter provided by CSA (Canadian Space Agency) for detailed 3D topographic construction. map of bennu,
NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, provides overall mission management, systems engineering, and safety and mission assurance for OSIRIS-APEX. Dani Mendoza Dellagistina of the University of Arizona, Tucson, is the principal investigator. Leads the university science team and the mission’s science observation planning and data processing. Lockheed Martin Space in Littleton, Colorado built the spacecraft and provided flight operations. NASA Goddard and KinetX Aerospace are responsible for navigating the OSIRIS-Apex spacecraft. International partnerships on this mission include the spacecraft’s laser altimeter instrument from CSA. OSIRIS-APEX (formerly named OSIRIS-REx) is the third mission of NASA’s New Frontiers program, managed by NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, for the agency’s Science Mission Directorate in Washington.