To Bennu and Back — unlocking the secrets of an asteroid
NASA’s OSIRIS-REx mission launched in 2016, bound for the 500-metre-diameter near-Earth carbon-rich asteroid Bennu. In September 2023, it successfully returned 122 g of asteroid regolith back to Earth, since when scientists around the world have been hard at work unlocking its secrets. Samples returned from asteroid Bennu by the OSIRIS-REx spacecraft are dominated by clay minerals and carbonates. Bennu is enriched in water, and contains sodium salts, phosphates and bio-essential compounds such as amino acids and nucleobases. Together these provide a complete package of ingredients known to be essential to life on Earth, as well as suitable catalysts to further organic reactions. The talk will discuss the results of the science team and the implications for the formation of habitable worlds.
Speaker biography:
Professor Sara Russell is the leader of the Planetary Materials Group at the Natural History Museum in London, where her team uses meteorites and samples from space missions to understand the origin and evolution of the Solar System. Her main interests are in early Solar System processes and the evolution of Earth’s Moon. After a first degree in Natural Sciences at the University of Cambridge she undertook a PhD in cosmochemistry at the Open University before positions at Caltech, California and the Smithsonian, Washingon DC. She is involved in several space missions, as a member of the sample analysis team for the Hayabusa2 mission to asteroid Ryugu, an International Science Board Member for Japan’s MMX mission to Mars’ moon Phobos, and a Deputy Mission Sample Scientist for OSIRIS-REx. She is the proud namesake of asteroid (5497) Sararussell.
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