Leonard David's INSIDE OUTER SPACE

Ready and waiting. Dante Lauretta, OSIRIS-REx’s principal investigator from the University of Arizona holds a mock up of the asteroid collection device.
Image credit: Barbara David

A NASA spacecraft is nearing Earth in express delivery mode.

Launched way back in September 2016, NASA’s Origins Spectral Interpretation Resource Identification Security Regolith Explorer (OSIRIS-REx) is toting a collection of asteroid bits and pieces. They were plucked from asteroid Bennu, an ancient rubble pile of odds and ends from the early days of solar system creation about 4.5 billion years ago.

Full-stop

On September 24, those deliverables are to parachute into the Department of Defense Dugway Proving Ground in the Utah Test and Training Range, roughly 80 miles west of Salt Lake City, Utah.

Artwork shows OSIRIS-REx spacecraft at Bennu.
Credit: NASA/University of Arizona

I recently talked with Dante Lauretta, OSIRIS-REx’s principal investigator from the University of Arizona in Tucson, in anticipation of the full-stop touchdown of specimens from asteroid Bennu.

For the full story, go to my new Space.com article – “OSIRIS-REx’s Dante Lauretta shares final preparations for Sept. 24 asteroid-sample return” at:

https://www.space.com/dante-lauretta-man-on-mission-osiris-rex-sample-recovery