skip to main content

Webinar: OSIRIS-REx Sample Return from Asteroid Bennu

Monday, November 30, 2020
5:00pm to 6:00pm
Add to Cal
Online Event
  • Public Event

Join us for a talk with Dr. Dante Lauretta, principal investigator of the OSIRIS-REx mission and a professor of planetary science at the University of Arizona's Lunar and Planetary Laboratory.

► Zoom Registration Link

The OSIRIS-REx mission traveled to Bennu, a carbon-rich, near-Earth asteroid. The spacecraft launched on September 8, 2016, and rendezvoused with Bennu in 2018. Sample collection from site Nightingale occurred in October 2020.

The sample will return to Earth in 2023 and will be the first for a U.S. mission. The sample may hold clues to the origin of the solar system and the organic molecules that may have seeded life on Earth. The mission is in an exciting phase right now as the OSIRIS-REx spacecraft operations continue in the Sample Acquisition campaign.

This lecture is sponsored by the W. M. Keck Institute for Space Studies (KISS).