NASA invites media to the U.S. Army’s Dugway Proving Ground about 80 miles southwest of Salt Lake City on Thursday, July 20, before the agency’s first asteroid sample collected in space is returned to Earth.
The sample was collected from the asteroid Bennu in October 2020 by NASA’s OSIRIS-REx (Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification and Security – Regolith Explorer) mission, and will arrive via parachute to the Utah desert on Sept. 24.
Media will have the opportunity July 20 to interview the researchers who provided essential technology that helped OSIRIS-REx capture and store the Bennu sample, as well as learn why NASA selected the Utah desert as the mission’s landing site.
The mission team also will discuss OSIRIS-REx’s landing and recovery operations. Activities for media include a clean room facility tour and viewing the sample return capsule training model.
The event is open to U.S. media, who must register online by 5 p.m. MDT on Friday, July 7, for consideration to participate. Check-in at Dugway Proving Ground will be at 8 a.m. on the day of the event.
NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, provides overall mission management, systems engineering, and the safety and mission assurance for OSIRIS-REx. Dante Lauretta of the University of Arizona, Tucson, is the principal investigator. The university leads the science team and the mission’s science observation planning and data processing. Lockheed Martin Space in Littleton, Colorado, built the spacecraft and provides flight operations. Goddard and KinetX Aerospace are responsible for navigating the OSIRIS-REx spacecraft. Curation for OSIRIS-REx, including processing the sample when it arrives on Earth, will take place at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston.
International partnerships on this mission include the OSIRIS-REx Laser Altimeter instrument from CSA (Canadian Space Agency) and asteroid sample science collaboration with JAXA’s (Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency) Hayabusa2 mission.
OSIRIS-REx is the third mission in NASA’s New Frontiers Program, managed by NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, for the agency’s Science Mission Directorate in Washington.
