OSIRIS-REx Technology: OCAMS

  • Released Wednesday, December 7, 2016
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The OSIRIS-REx camera suite will provide global maps and close-up images of asteroid Bennu, along with information about the carbon-rich asteroid's chemical makeup.
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Music Credits: "Ultimate Question" and "Victory Or Failure" by Guy & Zab Skornik [SACEM]

NASA is sending the OSIRIS-REx spacecraft to explore near-Earth asteroid Bennu, a carbon-rich body that may contain clues to the origins of life. When OSIRIS-REx arrives at Bennu in 2018, it will spend over a year orbiting the asteroid and studying it with a set of remote sensing instruments. The OSIRIS-REx Camera Suite, or OCAMS, will provide high-resolution images of Bennu, allowing OSIRIS-REx to map the asteroid, determine its mineralogy, and even take close-up pictures of the surface at less than a centimeter per pixel. After OCAMS and its fellow instruments have thoroughly surveyed Bennu, OSIRIS-REx will carry out its most important task: collecting a sample of the asteroid for return to Earth in 2023.

Learn more about OCAMS.
Visit the OSIRIS-REx mission website.

OCAMS, the OSIRIS-REx Camera Suite, consists of three instruments: the narrow-angle PolyCam, medium-angle MapCam, and wide-angle SamCam.

Artist concept of the OSIRIS-REx Camera Suite making a spectral map of asteroid Bennu.

OCAMS sits on the OSIRIS-REx main instrument deck. Bennu is reflected in the primary mirror of PolyCam (left), and in the OTES spectrometer (right).

For More Information

See NASA.gov

Credits

Please give credit for this item to:
NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center

This page was originally published on Wednesday, December 7, 2016.
This page was last updated on Wednesday, May 3, 2023 at 1:48 PM EDT.

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