Primitive asteroids like Bennu act as time capsules, preserving the earliest history of our solar system and possibly even the chemical signatures of the building blocks of life. NASA’s OSIRIS-REx mission visited asteroid Bennu, a potentially hazardous asteroid, to learn more about the early solar system as well as the hazards and resources of near-Earth space rocks. Using high precision tracking, the OSIRIS-REx spacecraft was able to autonomously collect a sample from the surface of Bennu and deliver a total of 121.6 grams to Earth on September 24, 2023. In this talk, Dr. Danny Glavin, an astrobiologist and a senior scientist in the Solar System Exploration Division at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, provides an overview of the scientific goals of the OSIRIS-REx mission and discusses the early science results from the Bennu samples as well as what we hope to learn from them in the future.
This was recorded on January 16, 2025.
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