To Bennu and back: the OSIRIS-REx mission – with Professor Sara Russell
public in-person lecture
NASA’s mission to asteroid Bennu and what we have learnt from the asteroidal fragments brought back to Earth.
Professor Sara Russell - Research Scientist and Head of Planetary Materials Group, Natural History Museum; Visiting Professor, Dept of Earth Science & Engineering, Imperial College London.
The OSIRIS-REx mission was NASA’s first mission to visit an asteroid and bring a sample back to Earth, to study in our laboratories. The mission launched in 2016 and returned in 2023, with 121g of pristine asteroidal material. The returned material is a treasure trove for scientists learning about the origin and early evolution of our Solar System. This water and carbon-rich material may provide clues about how life evolved on Earth and perhaps elsewhere.
Professor Sara Russell leads the Planetary Materials Group at the Natural History Museum, and is a Visiting Professor of the Department of Earth Science and Engineering at Imperial. Her group is interested in using meteorites and samples returned from space missions to understand the formation of our Solar System and the evolution of the Moon. She is a Deputy Mission Sample Scientist for OSIRIS-REx, as well as member of the science team for the Japanese asteroidal sample return mission Hayabusa2 and Science Board member for the upcoming Japanese mission MMX that will collect regolith from Mars’ moon Phobos.
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