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Canada will join NASA in a mission to bring back rocks from an asteroid that’s considered a potential threat to hit the Earth some day.

Known as a “sample return” mission, the unmanned spacecraft would launch for the asteroid Bennu in late 2016, arriving in 2018. Its mission is multi-pronged: It will try to open a window on how Earth and its life evolved, hunt for valuable resources, and learn more about how we can potentially shove threatening asteroids out of the path of our planet.

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Today our knowledge of asteroids comes almost entirely through telescopes millions of miles away. While robot spacecraft can already examine rocks on Mars, this mission would allow scientists to do far more kinds of investigation only possible in a fully-equipped lab.

The spacecraft would not quite land. Instead, the plan is to hover near the surface and reach out with a mechanical scoop to lift at least 60 grams of rocky material off the surface. The total amount could be as much as 500 grams. Canada’s contribution — a laser instrument to map the asteroid’s surface in three dimensions — means we will get four per cent of whatever rocks are returned to Earth in 2023.