On the morning of September 24, 2023, Dante Lauretta woke up early, his heartbeat is pounding. He spent his 20 years working on his NASA space mission aimed at scooping up asteroid samples and bringing them back to Earth. Now it’s time for the sample capsule to land. If something goes wrong, it could be smashed to pieces on the desert floor, as flat as a pancake and of no use to science.
Fortunately, the landing was successful. And since that day, researchers led by planetary scientist Lauretta from the University of Arizona have been hard at work studying asteroid Bennu’s brittle jet-black material. Their mission, called OSIRIS-REx, is one of several similar efforts that will undoubtedly usher in a golden age of asteroid science. We now have at least three pure samples brought back from the asteroid, and thrilling plans are underway to visit others ( “Encounter with an asteroid”Under).
Lauretta wrote a book about the OSIRIS-REx mission. asteroid hunter.Here he says: new scientist Why the asteroid samples are important, what his team has discovered so far, and how Bennu could be part of a lost ocean world, a warm planet that could have served as an incubator for Earth. About his surprising hypothesis that it may be part of a watery world. components of life.
Joshua Haugego: You watched the OSIRIS-REx sample land from a helicopter. How nervous were you?
Dante Lauretta: I woke up at 1:30 this morning.
