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NASA's Osiris-Rex poised to grab a piece of asteroid Bennu: How to watch live

WION Web Team
Washington, United StatesUpdated: Oct 20, 2020, 10:29 AM IST
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NASA's unmanned spacecraft Osiris-Rex (Image: NASA) Photograph:(Others)

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The American spacecraft is going to lower itself and manoeuvre for a 'high-five' and deliver a squirt of gas to stir up the surface

A first-of-its-kind near-Earth mission launched by US space agency National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) will briefly touch down an asteroid called Bennu on Tuesday.

The American spacecraft is going to lower itself and manoeuvre for a 'high-five' and deliver a squirt of gas to stir up the surface.

It can be watched live on October 20 at around 3:12 p.m. on NASA TV and will also post it on the agency's website.

Lockheed Martin, who had built the robot explorer will also stream the daring mission live.

The main goal collect of the mission is to carbon samples from an asteroid, a cosmic body that may have delivered life-giving materials to our planet billions of years. 

It is also expected to shed light on how to find precious resources such as water and metals in asteroids, a field that has generated increasing interest worldwide.

The first-of-its-kind near-Earth asteroid mission had blasted off at 7:05 pm (23:05 GMT) atop an Atlas V rocket in Cape Canaveral, Florida on September 8, 2016.