Mission to asteroid a 'go' for Thursday launch

USA Today: MELBOURNE, Fla. — An Atlas V rocket carrying NASA's first asteroid sample-return mission will roll to its Cape Canaveral pad Wednesday in preparation for a Thursday evening launch, after managers found no ill effects from a SpaceX rocket’s nearby explosion last week.

“It was a stark reminder to me and to this whole team about the risks that that we face in this business,” said Dante Lauretta, lead scientist for NASA’s $800 million OSIRIS-REx mission, during a pre-launch news conference Tuesday at Kennedy Space Center. “It made us take a look again at everything we had done — all of our processes, all of our procedures, all of our equipment.”

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