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

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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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