NASA is mere months away from the launch of the first mission to collect samples from an asteroid and return them to Earth. Before the OSIRIS-REx mission can get off the ground, it needs to be thoroughly tested, and that’s what manufacturer Lockheed Martin is about to begin. The spacecraft is fully assembled, so it’s time to see if it will stand up to the rigors of space travel.

OSIRIS-REx stands for Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification, Security, Regolith Explorer (take a wild guess whether the name or acronym was decided on first). The goal of the mission will be to encounter an asteroid called 101955 Bennu in orbit of the sun. This object is about 500 meters in diameter and is considered a potential Earth impactor. OSIRIS-REx will ease up alongside the asteroid to collect a sample before heading home.

That’s easier said than done, of course. Bennu is whipping around the sun at more than 63,000 mph, and OSIRIS-REx needs to match its course and speed exactly to get into position. It’s not going to land on the asteroid, but will extend a robotic arm to touch the surface. A blast of nitrogen gas will disrupt the dust and rocks on the asteroid and allow the arm to collect at least 60 grams of material before retracting. There’s plenty that could go wrong with such an ambitious mission, so the focus right now is to make sure the spacecraft is as reliable as possible.

OSIRIS-REx is being transported to Lockheed’s Waterton Canyon facility in Colorado for five months of rigorous tests. While there, it will be exposed to conditions like those it will experience while being blasted into space atop an Atlas V rocket. It will be subjected to vibration, shock, and electromagnetic interference. The spacecraft will also be placed in a vacuum chamber and exposed to extremely cold and hot temperatures to simulate the trip to Bennu.

If this final stage of assembly goes well, OSIRIS-REx will be shipped to NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in May where it will undergo final preparations for launch. The mission will get under way in September 2016 when OSIRIS-REx lifts off. It will take almost two years to reach Bennu, and it won’t be back on Earth until 2023.

The samples collected from Bennu could help scientists learn more about the formation of the solar system. Asteroids like Bennu are thought to be like time capsules from the early solar system, and you just can’t learn as much from them after they’ve been scorched in the atmosphere. If you want a pristine sample, you have to build a probe like OSIRIS-REx to go and get one. The mission is expected to cost $800 million overall, but OSIRIS-REx itself accounts for just $183 million of that.