Public May Offer Messages for NASA Asteroid Probe

NASA's OSIRIS-REx mission launches Asteroid Time Capsule -- a mission to collect ideas from the public about space exploration 10 years from now.

Image Credit: Heather Roper/University of Arizona/OSIRIS-REx

NASA is inviting the worldwide public to submit short messages and images on social media that could be placed in a time capsule aboard a spacecraft launching to an asteroid in 2016.

Called the Origins-Spectral Interpretation-Resource Identification-Security-Regolith Explorer (OSIRIS-REx), the spacecraft will rendezvous with the asteroid Bennu in 2019, collect a sample and return the cache in a capsule to Earth in 2023 for detailed study. The robotic mission will spend more than two years at the 1,760-foot (500-meter)-wide asteroid and return a minimum of 2 ounces (60 grams) of its surface material.

Topics for submissions by the public should be about solar system exploration in 2014 and predictions for space exploration activities in 2023. The mission team will choose 50 tweets and 50 images to be placed in the capsule. Messages can be submitted Sept. 2 - 30.

More - Link >>> http://www.nasa.gov/press/2014/september/nasa-invites-public-to-submit-messages-for-asteroid-mission-time-capsule/

Source: NASA.

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