NASA Plans Asteroid Sample Return

By Frank Morring, Jr. .
Washington .

NASA plans to launch a probe to a primordial carbonaceous asteroid in 2016 for an $800 million-plus start of the New Frontiers mission to bring back a sample for study on Earth.

Japan has returned tiny samples of the asteroid Itakowa, but the Origins-Spectral Interpretation-Resource Identification-Security-Regolith Explorer (Osiris-REx) program will be the first asteroid sample-return mission ...

---