>The Origins Spectral Interpretation Resource Identification Security - Regolith Explorer spacecraft will travel to a near-Earth asteroid, called Bennu (formerly 1999 RQ36), and bring at least a 2.1-ounce sample back to Earth for study. The mission will help scientists investigate how planets formed and how life began, as well as improve our understanding of asteroids that could impact Earth.
>OSIRIS-REx is scheduled to launch Sept. 8, 2016, at 7:05 p.m. EDT. As planned, the spacecraft will reach its asteroid target in 2018 and return a sample to Earth in 2023.
Launch vehicle: ULA Atlas V 411
Hudson Martin
I'm glad that NASA went with a reliable launch service provider rather than a meme company like SpaceX.
Henry Smith
well, you get what you pay for
Henry Gutierrez
OSIRIS-RExplosion?
Jeremiah Barnes
...
Bentley Richardson
Reminder: Atlas V had a serious launch anomaly as recently as this March, when the Atlas V first stage had an early shutdown, and the mission only succeeded due to Atlas V being far oversized for the payload (the lightest configuration of Atlas V can put ~10 tons in LEO, while under 7 tons was being launched).
This will be the third flight after Atlas V's return to flight following the anomaly, and it's a high-energy mission. A similar anomaly would likely result in mission failure this time.
Benjamin Brooks
t. retard whose rocket is grounded yet again from their annual unplanned explosion
Nolan Foster
>carbon bearing asteroid >bringing back samples
inb4 a world ending virus or microorganism
Michael Cooper
Before March's anomaly, the last Atlas-V anomaly was in 2007. Atlas-V has one of the best records of any launch vehicle.
Ethan Young
and March's anomaly didn't even result in a mission failure
Luke Harris
ULA's reliability record might owe a lot to the lack of opportunities for American rocket engineers until recently.
If their best people don't see a future at ULA or its contractors, and are going off to start or join startups, or they're just old and retire or lose focus, their operation could go to shit in a real hurry.
Owen Gutierrez
Given SpaceX's current track record, the literal exact opposite is true.
Josiah Clark
SpaceX is doing great. They're moving fast and breaking things. That's how you make progress. There's basically nothing on Falcon 9 that wasn't invented in the current millenium.
Atlas V is Zenit/Centaur, American 50s tech on top of Soviet 80s tech, with 1960s ICBMs strapped on the sides. Very mature. Very expensive. Very boring. Not interesting to talented engineers. You work on a thing like that if you only care about a steady paycheck.
Cameron Flores
>Atlas V is Zenit/Centaur, American 50s tech on top of Soviet 80s tech, with 1960s ICBMs strapped on the sides. This won't be true for much longer. If everything goes to plan, Atlas-Vs will soon be flying with the GEM-63! No longer will it be American 50s tech on top of Soviet 80s tech, with 1960s ICBMs strapped on the sides. It will instead be American 50s tech on top of Soviet 80s tech, with 1980s ICBMs strapped on the sides. That my friends is real progress.
Christopher Gutierrez
>SpaceX is doing great kek pic related
>They're moving fast and breaking things. This is different than their landing tests We've been delivering stuff to space for nearly 70 years At some point launch failures need to be considered completely abnormal. Arianespace and ULA have already demonstrated its possible.
>There's basically nothing on Falcon 9 that wasn't invented in the current millenium. You're confusing "invented" and "engineered" The only new thing that SpaceX truly invented is their Dragon heat shield material.
>Atlas V is Zenit/Centaur, American 50s tech on top of Soviet 80s tech, with 1960s ICBMs strapped on the sides. Very mature. Very expensive. Very boring. Not interesting to talented engineers. ULA is working with 1/4 the capital that spacex is and they're rolling out a new rocket less than 3 years from now.
>You work on a thing like that if you only care about a steady paycheck. You're implying that people at ULA or Arianespace don't take pride in their work or enjoy their work? Top kek, what a moron.
You sound like a salty idiot who got their SpaceX application rejected and is too proud to work anywhere else.
Matthew Gray
wrong pic
Carter Carter
ULA is a product of a bygone era. Their lack of innovation and fear of progress will cause them to fade into obscurity within the next 10-15 years. The era of innovation and progress is upon us.
Dylan Stewart
what is Vulcan, chopped liver?
Easton Phillips
Who is this qt?
Cooper Young
Anyone know if there's a technical stream of the launch somewhere? NASA-TV is worse than the normie Space-X live streams
Isaiah Davis
A heap of various old technologies, brainlet.
Easton Jones
What "new" technologies does falcon 9 use?
Brody Stewart
non-burger here, is it free to go see the launch from the stands?
Logan Gutierrez
That's just to pass the time
It's a normal countdown right now
Zachary Morris
Only if you consider it "free" to travel to Florida
John Moore
Yeah and I prefer to just watch the rocket on the pad with the occasional audio of the launch crew over some person hundreds of miles away gushing about how cool space is.
Thomas Baker
>what is Vulcan, chopped liver? Pretty much, yeah.
Like everything else ULA does, Vulcan's just a byproduct of REAL rocket programs.
Blue Origin's doing exciting new work. ULA's just riding their coattails, buying some copies of BE-4 to re-engine Atlas V with.
The partial reusability talk for Vulcan is a joke. It's a vastly inferior form of reusability compared to what SpaceX already has working, and they're not even going to start developing it until after the first flight, which is no sooner than three years off.
Vulcan's probably never going to fly, anyway. It's mostly a stalling maneuver by ULA, hoping that the political thing with Russia will blow over and they'll be able to continue running Atlas V.
Angel Hughes
ULA is a meme company. Lockheed has even said they fucking hate being stuck in the launch business.
Michael Davis
>ULA: launching a rocket in 5 minutes >SpaceX: not launching a rocket for at least 6 months
Yeah, ULA is really the "meme company" in this situation.
William Cooper
Go GO go go GO clear to proceed go GO go
Colton Young
Why do they have the countdown when they've already verified everything is good?
Evan Ross
>SpaceX: not launching a rocket for at least 6 months Are you kidding? They only had a failure during a test.
They'll probably launch from California in October, and from Florida again in November.
Jeremiah Martinez
theres always a guy trying to be fancy
Chase Lopez
That failure during testing wrecked LC-40. It took Orbital Sciences a year to clean up after the Antares incident and the damage to LC-40 is probably worse and LC-39A won't be finished for several months. They won't be launching from Florida anytime soon. As for launches from California, I think when they resume flight there will highly dependent on what the cause of last week's incident was.
Brayden Taylor
>a 2.1-ounce sample ew, i'd hate to be the guy who will have to handle it
Benjamin Roberts
lmao you're fucking retarded, kid
William Foster
it will only be the very first methane fueled vehicle to get to orbit. nothing new about that!
Charles Powell
>LC-39A won't be finished for several months. Yeah, November, like I said. The Vandenberg pad is good to go, and they've got plenty of polar launches manifested.
They don't need LC-40 fixed any time soon. Rather than repair it, they'll probably refit it for a more streamlined, automated launch process.
Christopher Martin
Another reliable, successful launch brought you you by America's premier launch company: United Launch Alliance. :)
Gavin Brooks
>it will only be the very first methane fueled vehicle to get to orbit ...if it ever flies, and neither Blue Origin's orbital vehicle nor SpaceX's next-gen rocket goes first.
Anyway, you can't really expect Vulcan to be highly reliable. ULA is a ten-year-old company that has never designed or significantly altered its own rocket before.
Elijah Jenkins
It's not over yet.
Luis Jenkins
>bringing rocket science down to Earth TERRIBLE slogan. Someone needs to be fired and banned from the industry.
Christopher Bell
fuck America stupid American back to you lard
Kevin Hall
>tfw no qt 6/10 NASAfu
Lucas Ward
ULA is the dumb nigger of the rocket industry, that got where its is due to government handouts.
John Collins
Why should the government give more money to the company with shit reliability?
Cameron Ortiz
more like white trash. Two companies caught with their hand in each other's pants, forced into a shotgun marriage, living in Alabama.
Jackson Miller
Second burn nominal so far.
Julian Cook
>the comments on the live watchpage
Kevin Clark
nominal
Leo Reed
?
Noah Richardson
Successful deployment!
Evan Barnes
Launch replays now!
Jonathan Richardson
having just one solid booster on the side looks really strange and asymmetrical.
Mason Williams
and both solar arrays deployed!
Sebastian Phillips
Obama getting in on the act, sheesh!
Connor Cooper
Says the faggot tranny nigger.
Wyatt Allen
Had a friend who worked on it, glad things seemed to have gone smoothly.
Christian Baker
who here rewatching the andromeda strain?
Jose Baker
I wasn't sure this was actually the case but it is. What's the deal here? Is the main engine offset from the center of the mass? Or is the CoM off to the same side as the solid or something? But everything was ok when it popped off.
Ethan Diaz
Atlas V has been called "dial-a-rocket". It can sport 0-5 solid boosters, depending on how heavy the payload is. But that includes a single solid booster, which I don't think any other rocket has been designed for. It doesn't really cause problems because the motor is angled to go through the center of gravity, but it looks odd.