ORLANDO, Fla. – A member of NASA’s first asteroid sample collection mission team and UCF planetary scientist is teaching a class about asteroids and comets just hours before the mission he has been working on for a decade is set to collect a sample of the asteroid Bennu. [LIVE UPDATES: Follow along as NASA’s spacecraft picks up a piece of asteroid]“I just want them to be excited,” he said. And so this is very relevant.”Campins isn’t the only UCF faculty on the OSIRIS-REx team, Associate Prof. Kerri Donaldson Hanna also serves as a a participating scientist on the mission. A photo of the asteroid Bennu, taken by NASA's OSIRIS-REx spacecraft from 85 miles away. If all goes well, the spacecraft will drop the capsule with the sample back on Earth in 2023 completing its mission to Bennu and back.

The spacecraft name stands for Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification, Security, Regolith Explorer, a true mouthful even for a NASA acronym. The 500-meter-wide asteroid was chosen for several reasons, including that it could one day-- in a very long time-- hit our home planet. Beyond OSIRIS-REx NASA is only ramping up its study of asteroids. NASA’s Double Asteroid Re-direction Test mission, or DART, is designed to test technology to prevent an impact of a hazardous asteroid. Another spacecraft nicknamed Lucy, is slated to launch in October 2021, will be bound for the Trojan Asteroids.