NASA Asteroid Mission Set for 2016 - http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news...
May 27, 2011
from
"A NASA spacecraft has been approved to launch in 2016 to visit a near-Earth asteroid, mission managers announced today.
Dubbed OSIRIS-REx—for Origins Spectral-Interpretation Resource-Identification Security Regolith Explorer—the robotic craft will conduct the first U.S. mission to collect pieces of an asteroid and bring them back to Earth.
OSIRIS-REx was selected out of three projects under consideration for funding by NASA's New Frontiers Program, which aims to develop uncrewed spacecraft missions designed to help us understand our solar system."
- Lit