NASA and its academic partners are about to do something they’ve never done before: launch a spacecraft, rendezvous with an asteroid, collect a sample of regolith, or dust, from the surface and return it to Earth.

OSIRIS-REx is set to launch from Florida’s Space Coast September 8th on a seven year mission. Dante Lauretta, Principle Investigation of the mission, gives us a tour of OSIRIS-REx and the the science equipment on board.

But just what are they hoping to find? And how in the world are they going to pull this one off? To give us the details of this historic mission we chat with Robin Seemangal, a reporter at The New York Observer, where he covers space and contributor to Popular Science.