For the next two years, NASA’s latest robotic spacecraft will be chasing down an asteroid near Earth in the hopes of scooping up some of the most primordial bits of the solar system.

The premise of the mission for the spacecraft, Osiris-Rex, is simple: Fly to an asteroid, grab some of the rock and bring it back to Earth, where scientists will study some of the pristine ingredients that went into the making of the solar system, including possibly the building blocks of life.

“What was that beginning organic material like?” James L. Green, the director of NASA’s planetary science division, said in an interview. “That’s what’s really exciting about this. This is what we want.”

The details are a bit more complicated.

The spacecraft is sitting on top of an Atlas 5 rocket at Cape Canaveral, Fla., ready for launching on Thursday on a seven-year mission.