The first asteroid sample collected in space by a U.S. spacecraft and brought to Earth is unveiled to the world at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston on Wednesday, Oct. 11.
The science team from NASA’s OSIRIS-REx (Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification and Security – Regolith Explorer) mission will provide results from an initial analysis of the sample, which landed on Sunday, Sept. 24, in the Utah desert. News conference participants include:
• NASA Administrator Bill Nelson
• Lori Glaze, NASA Planetary Directorate Science Division Director
• Dante Lauretta, OSIRIS-REx principal investigator, University of Arizona, Tucson
• Francis McCubbin, OSIRIS-REx Head Astromaterials curator, NASA Johnson
• Daniel Glavin, OSIRIS-REx sample analysis lead, NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt
Scientists worldwide will study the bits of asteroid to gather clues about the origin of the solar system and how life may have begun on Earth.
Watch the moment OSIRIS-REx collected the sample in 2020: https://youtu.be/xj0O-fLSV7c
I love how one element of this is acknowledging that we don't yet have all the scientific instruments that could benefit from studying these samples, so right off the bat NASA is locking away the majority of what was collected for future researchers.
They did the same for all the moon rock samples. This video was a pretty cool look into the facility: https://youtu.be/QxZ_iPldGtI?si=EY6m-JLY0pEgTj_3