On Monday, NASA officials shared that Osiris-Rex mission has successfully passed an important milestone. It has completed the design and development phase and now has moved to the spacecraft-building stage.

Mission principal investigator Dante Lauretta of the University of Arizona was of the view that it is quite an exciting time for the team. "After almost four years of intense design efforts, we are now proceeding with the start of flight- system assembly. I am grateful for the hard work and team effort required to get us to this point", affirmed Lauretta.

Osiris-Rex stands for Origins Spectral Interpretation Resource Identification Security Regolith Explorer. It is scheduled for launch in September 2016. If everything goes well in the mission then the robotic spacecraft will meet with a 1,650-foot-wide asteroid named Bennu in 2018.

The probe will grab at least 2.1 ounces of space rock material and will bring the same on earth in 2023. Main aim of the mission is to help researchers to know about the solar system's early days. Also, it will shed light on how earth was able to have carbon-containing building blocks of life.

Researchers affirmed that Bennu is considered to be a dangerous asteroid. Therefore, Osiris-Rex will require to have planetary-defense applications. Lately, the probe has met milestone called Key Decision Point-D (KDP-D).

On Sunday, KDP-D was organized on Sunday at NASA Headquarters in Washington, D. C. Lockheed Martin is building the Osiris-Rex spacecraft for NASA and it started assembling operations in Denver on March 27.

Over the next six months, Lockheed Martin technicians will put many subsystems on the spacecraft, including its avionics, power and telecommunications systems and five scientific instruments. Lockheed Martin representatives were of the view that by this fall, the probe should be ready to start environmental testing.