Media Coverage

The OSIRIS-REx spacecraft will rendezvous with Earth Sept. 24 to deliver the sample it collected from the asteroid Bennu in October 2020. Even if the capsule suffers a hard landing, the OSIRIS-REx team remains confident they could still pull off some great science. "What we're worried about is protecting the asteroid sample from Earth contamination," says Anjani Polit, OSIRIS-REx's mission implementation systems engineer at the University of Arizona. "All the effort, the many rehearsals and operational readiness tests that are higher and higher fidelity, that's worked extremely well."

University of Arizona Regents Professor of Planetary Sciences Dante Lauretta, the OSIRIS-REx principal investigator, teamed up with Brian May, lead guitarist for the rock band Queen, who holds a doctorate in astrophysics, on a new book about the asteroid Bennu, source of the sample obtained by OSIRIS-REx in 2020.

In September, the OSIRIS-REx spacecraft will rendezvous with Earth to deliver the sample it collected from the asteroid Bennu in October 2020. Scientists hope the material sheds light on how amino acids, the basic building blocks of life, came to earth in the first place. "We're looking at the whole history of the solar system here, right?" said University of Arizona Regents Professor of Planetary Sciences Dante Lauretta, the OSIRIS-REx principal investigator. "Literally, we're looking for grains that existed before the sun did before the planets existed, we call those pre-solar grains."

Everything must go smoothly when the OSIRIS-REx spacecraft releases its capsule with pristine asteroid material to land in the Utah desert in September.

The OSIRIS-REx spacecraft remains on schedule for a September rendezvous with Earth to deliver the material it collected from the asteroid Bennu in October 2020. Researchers from the University of Arizona on Tuesday participated in a recovery rehearsal in Colorado. Regents Professor of Planetary Sciences Dante Lauretta, the OSIRIS-REx principal investigator, called the cargo on board a "scientific bonanza," that could potentially reveal secrets about the formation of our solar system, even how life began here on Earth. "I've been poring over origin-of-life research. I do believe we have some new ideas. We have some key tests, and we are going to at least move the needle on this problem," Lauretta said.

As the OSIRIS-REx spacecraft flies by Earth, it will deliver a sample from the asteroid Bennu. After blasting through Earth's atmosphere scientists will collect the capsule from the landing site about 80 miles southwest of Salt Lake City. After the drop-off, OSIRIS-Rex will begin a new mission to study near-Earth asteroid Apophis. On the next leg of its journey, the spacecraft will be called OSIRIS-APEX with a new principal investigator, University of Arizona planetary science professor Daniella DellaGiustina.

When the OSIRIS-REx spacecraft returns from its seven-year mission Sept. 24, the probe will drop off a canister holding about a cup of pebbles and dust from the surface of the near-Earth asteroid Bennu. About 200 scientists will receive portions of that material, some of the only pristine bits of primordial asteroid ever to reach Earth's surface, which mission managers hope will reveal the state of the solar system when it was first forming, and possibly whether amino acids and other chemical compounds important for biology were present. "The 'O' in 'OSIRIS-REx' is really for the origin of life," said University of Arizona Regents Professor of Planetary Sciences Dante Lauretta, the mission's principal investigator. "We want to understand the role that these carbon-rich asteroids played in delivering the precursors of life to Earth."

The OSIRIS-REx spacecraft returns from its seven-year mission September 24 when the probe will drop off a canister holding about a cup of pebbles and dust from the surface of the near-Earth asteroid Bennu. About 200 scientists will receive portions of that material – some of the only pristine bits of primordial asteroid ever to reach Earth's surface – which mission managers hope will reveal the state of the solar system when it first formed, including which amino acids and other chemical compounds important for biology were present. "The 'O' in 'OSIRIS-REx' is really for the origin of life," said University of Arizona Regents Professor of Planetary Sciences Dante Lauretta, the mission's principal investigator. "We want to understand the role that these carbon-rich asteroids played in delivering the precursors of life to Earth."

In anticipation of the University of Arizona-led OSIRIS-REx asteroid sample delivery this fall, the team last month held its first round of practice at retrieving the spacecraft's sample capsule from a simulated landing site at the Lockheed Martin campus near Denver. The real-life retrieval will take place Sep. 24 on the Department of Defense’s Utah Test and Training Range outside Salt Lake City.

The U.S. Postal Service announced Tuesday it would issue a new stamp honoring the University of Arizona-led OSIRIS-REx mission, praising the effort to return asteroid samples to Earth as something that "exemplifies American ingenuity, perseverance, and teamwork." The USPS will reveal the issue date and purchase locations soon.