| Abstract: On September 24, 2023, the Sample Return Capsule (SRC) of the OSIRIS-REx spacecraft, NASA’s New Frontiers 3 asteroid sample return mission, landed successfully in the Utah desert. Within that SRC was precious sample from asteroid (101955) Bennu, collected three years earlier. The seven-year journey of exploration culminated in sample from Bennu being safely stored at NASA Johnson Space Center on September 25, 2023, where the science canister was quickly opened. At that point, another kind of exploration began—the world had a look at the sample that can best be described as ‘holding the cosmos in your hand’—deep, dark black rock with twinkles of minerals rather than stars! In this talk, Professor Connolly, the Mission Sample Scientist for the OSIRIS-REx project and the Founding Chair and Professor in the Department of Geology at Rowan University, will discuss highlights of the mission. These will include highlights on the nature of the sample, how well the remote sensing data from the asteroid operation phase predicted the composition of the sample, and what constraints the data provide on the
formation and evolution of the earliest planetary bodies in the Solar System. |