![]() Credit: NASA/Goddard/University of Arizona.īesides my own work and that of my global colleagues, one of the most exciting things for me about the OSIRIS-REx mission is that ¾ of the Bennu sample will be put aside for the global scientific community and for the future. The map is centered on Houston, where the sample will be curated and stored for the wider scientific community of today and of the future. Below the map is a list of the institutions that will be the first to receive samples for a diversity of scientific investigations. This graphic shows a global map of destinations for the asteroid Bennu sample, which will arrive on Earth on Sept. All this to gain insight into the chemistry of the compounds in the rocks. When our Goddard lab receives the first pieces of Bennu in October 2023, we will analyze them like a forensics lab, including grinding them into dust and subjecting them to boiling water, acid, and more. JAXA is among the many institutions that will get pieces of Bennu. My team in the Astrobiology Analytical Laboratory studies meteorites, Apollo Moon samples, comet samples from NASA’s Stardust mission, and asteroid samples (we’ve analyzed pieces of Itokawa and Ryugu, asteroids sampled by our partner, JAXA, or the Japanese Aerospace Agency). My specialization is in the chemistry related to the origins of life, and so I work a lot with space rocks. I’m also the project scientist for OSIRIS-REx, which means I help manage mission science. ![]() ![]() You can see these questions reflected in the full name of the mission and spacecraft: Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification, and Security-Regolith Explorer. In doing so, we will address dozens of questions about asteroids, the early solar system, and the origins of life. When the sample returns, 233 scientists globally, including me, will get to explore the asteroid in our labs. I feel as though I have so much left to do, even though I’ve already spent 19 years preparing for this moment. It’s feeling more and more real every day. There are only a few months left until NASA’s OSIRIS-REx delivers a sample of asteroid Bennu on Sept. In this picture, Dworkin is holding a fragment of the Canyon Diablo meteorite, which struck Earth about 50,000 years ago, creating Meteor Crater in Arizona. Dworkin’s lab will receive pieces of asteroid Bennu for study after the sample arrives on Earth on Sept. He is standing in NASA Goddard’s Astrobiology Analytical Laboratory, where he and other scientists study meteorites, Apollo Moon samples, plus comet and asteroid samples. Jason Dworkin is an astrobiologist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, and the project scientist for NASA’s OSIRIS-REx mission. In the post below, Jason Dworkin, OSIRIS-REx project scientist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, reflects on the big science questions that inspired this daring mission. ![]() This occasion marks the last chance for the group to convene to make sure team members, lab facilities, and sample-analysis techniques are working as expected and ready for the delivery of Bennu’s rocks this September. This week, NASA’s OSIRIS-REx science team is meeting as a whole for the last time before the sample of asteroid Bennu arrives on Earth.
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