TUCSON, Ariz. (KVOA) — After seven years in space, and over four billion miles traveled, NASA’s OSIRIS-REx mission delivered the first U.S. sample from asteroid Bennu.

After all of that, the spacecraft will not retire!

Instead, NASA extended the University of Arizona led mission so that the spacecraft can be used to study another near-Earth asteroid named Apophis.

The mission was renamed OSIRIS-APEX, short for OSIRIS-APophis EXplorer.

Twenty minutes after dropping the sample high above Earth’s atmosphere on Sept. 24, the spacecraft went back up to put on course with Apophis in 5 and a half years.

The spacecraft will catch up to the asteroid on April 13, 2029, as the asteroid wizzes 20,000 miles above Earth’s service.

Scientists will then spend the next 18 months studying the asteroid in detail.

“Apophis is an infamous asteroid,” said DellaGiustina, who is an assistant professor of planetary sciences at the UArizona Lunar and Planetary Laboratory. “When it was discovered in 2004, there was a scare that it was going to impact the Earth in 2029, but that risk was retired. Then there was another scare that it was going to impact the Earth exactly seven years later, in 2036, but observations combined with modeling now show that Apophis doesn’t pose a risk for at least the next one hundred years. Despite this, Apophis still has this role in the psyche of all of us who study these things. While it’s not going to impact the Earth in 2029, however, it does get very close.”