 One day in the future, Earth is going to be hit by a large object from space. But there's two missions right now that are laying the groundwork that will one day help us save the world. And this is your space pod for December 4th, 2015. The threat of an asteroid impact on Earth is, as famously said, not a matter of if, but a matter of when. And luckily, scientists recently have taken note of this, and they've started a new generation of exploration to find out about these objects. NASA's entry into the next step of asteroid exploration is called Osiris-REx, which is a very long acronym. It stands for Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification, Security, Regolith, Explorer. Osiris-REx will be launched in September 2016 to an asteroid named Bennu, which actually has a 1 in 1,410 chance of hitting the Earth during a 30-year period between 2169 and 2199. The spacecraft will arrive in 2018 and spend roughly a year and a half in close proximity studying Bennu, determining its composition, determining how much solar radiation affects the orbit of the asteroid and, very excitingly, taking a sample from the surface to return to Earth. Osiris-REx will slowly approach Bennu's surface and angle its solar arrays into a Y shape so as to not collide with the asteroid in case of a hard bump. It will then deploy a special system that will spend five seconds gathering regolith and other materials at the surface into a container, which will then be returned to Earth during a flyby in 2023. Studying asteroids is extremely important since most of them are formed around the same time, the beginnings of our solar systems, and their surfaces have remained relatively untouched since that time as well. They're like little cosmic time capsules, telling us exactly what the conditions were like during the solar system's formation. JAXA is also getting in on the asteroid action with their spacecraft Hayabusa-2. Hayabusa-2 was launched December 3, 2014 on a three-and-a-half-year cruise to its target asteroid Ryugu. Ryugu just happens to be an extremely rare type of asteroid, what we call a CG type. C-class asteroids are the most common type and can be described as a big rock or rubble pile. G-class asteroids are actually somewhat rare and are often composed of clays and micas. CG types, like the asteroid Hayabusa-2 is going to, is a combination of both of those, and that is actually the rarest type of asteroid. Hayabusa-2 uses ion engines to propel itself towards its target, and when it reaches that target in 2018, much like OSIRIS-REx, it will first stay in close proximity and map determined composition and other investigations. Also like OSIRIS-REx, it will slowly move down towards the surface, but unlike OSIRIS-REx, it won't take a sample initially. First, it will drop an explosive device on the surface. This device has a charge shaped around nearly 3 kg of copper, so that when the device explodes, the copper will be shot into the surface at about 2 km per second and excavate a small crater. Hayabusa-2 will be on the other side of Ryugu when this occurs. It will then come back to the new fresh crater and sample pristine material, which it will then return to the Earth during a flyby in 2020. Thanks for watching This Space Pod, I'm Jared Head. Which of these two missions are you looking forward to the most? Well, tell me in the comments below. And also don't forget to like and subscribe to us. And in addition to that, check out our new and improved Patreon campaign that we've now moved to being a monthly campaign. So until the next Space Pod, keep exploring.