On July 17, 2014 the Canadian government announced funding that will help Canadian scientists and engineers build one of the key instruments onboard the US-led OSIRIS-REx mission, which aims to collect and return rock samples from an asteroid called Bennu, which comes within 450,000 kilometres of Earth every six years. (While the Japanese Hayabusa mission which returned to earth in 2010 was the first to sample an asteroid, difficulties with the mission meant that only small grains were captured.)
The Canadian contribution will be the OSIRIS-REx laser altimeter (OLA), and advanced scanning laser that will analyze the surface features of the asteroid called Bennu and help determine the best places to sample from. OSIRIS-REx is scheduled to launch in September 2016, reach Bennu in 2018 and return to Earth in 2023.
Information about the scientists is available here and more information about the mission can be found here and here.
