“Scientifically, it’s a rare event,” says Professor of Physics Yan Fernandez. “Philosophically, it’s a bonding opportunity.”

This is why there will be telescopes, protective glasses, TV displays and tables set up at �鶹ӳ����ý’s most visible outdoor gathering spot. Fernandez will be watching and bonding, too, but a thousand miles from campus. He and about a dozen others from �鶹ӳ����ý’s robust space research community are traveling to remote areas of Texas, Indiana and Mexico. Fernandez and his wife, Professor of Technical Communication Sonia Stephens, will tuck themselves into the southeast corner of Oklahoma, where he can do the type of experiential research that’s rarely attainable.

“We learned a few lessons from the eclipse in 2017,” Fernandez says.

We’ve come to him with questions about eclipses, but let’s start there, with a lesson learned.

What did you learn seven years ago?
An eclipse like that hadn’t happened in this part of North America in decades. That’s what makes the April 8 event unique — you’d normally wait almost a lifetime for an eclipse of such magnitude. In 2017 my wife and I traveled to Nebraska to watch from the path of totality, but thousands of people had done the same thing. When the sky started to cloud up, we were lucky enough to avoid the worst traffic and drive to a better spot to actually see totality. But afterward we were caught in traffic jams. This time we’ll be in a rural area where we can move around easier. That’s a tip for anyone — watch the forecast and move if necessary.

In your words, what exactly is a solar eclipse versus a lunar eclipse?
A solar eclipse is a really precise alignment of the sun, moon and Earth. It’s so perfect that the moon passes directly between the sun and Earth, casting a dramatic shadow on us. With a lunar eclipse, Earth passes directly between the sun and moon, with Earth casting a shadow on the moon.

You’re traveling to the “path of totality.” Explain that.
It’s the geographical line on Earth where the sun is completely blotted out behind the moon. If you’re on that line — on an arc from northwest Mexico to northern Indiana and into New England — you experience the weird darkness of a total solar eclipse. Orlando is off the path, so the sun will only be partially blocked by the moon. That’s a partial solar eclipse.

How will this eclipse compare to the 2017 eclipse in Orlando?
The moon blocked about 80% of the sun in 2017. This time the sun will be about 60% blocked. One of the advantages of being in Orlando for a partial eclipse is that you can see it for more than an hour. In the path of totality, you only see the sun totally eclipsed for about four minutes — although totality for even a short time is far more amazing than 99% partiality.

As an astronomer, you’ve seen a lot of phenomena. Why is a solar eclipse special?
To me, it’s the most awe-inspiring sight you can see. When I was a kid, our family would sail on Chesapeake Bay at night and look at the stars against the dark sky. I remember looking for Halley’s Comet through a telescope in 1986 — a once-in-a-lifetime event. And then as a researcher, I spent time studying asteroids from the top of Mauna Kea on Hawaii’s Big Island. All of those are fun and interesting, but nothing compares to a total solar eclipse.

If someone says, “Maybe I’ll watch, maybe I won’t,” what do you say?
Why wouldn’t you? It’s the easiest way to see an astronomical spectacle. All you have to do is go outside with protective glasses and look up. Unless it’s cloudy, as long as you have the right protection there’s no way not to see it. You don’t need optical aids, like a telescope. Ultimately, I think all of us should look up at the sky more often — whether there’s an eclipse or not.

Why do you want people to look at the sky more often?
The eclipse is special, but there are a lot of interesting things to see on a regular basis. Bright planets. Peculiar clouds. The International Space Station flies over us all the time. People travel to Central Florida from around the world to watch rocket launches that we can watch without going anywhere. Curiosity about the world and the worlds around us is always a good thing.

Have you wondered what solar eclipses must have been like without scientists forecasting them in advance?
It would have been horrifying to see the sun disappear. There were probably a lot of people with eye damage. It doesn’t take long to look at sun and burn the retina.

You’ve mentioned protective eyewear. What do you recommend?
Sunglasses aren’t enough protection. It’s the infrared, not just the visible light, that can damage the eyes. Use special eclipse glasses. Be careful of counterfeiters. A pair for 50 cents might not do the job, but you don’t need to spend $30 either.

For those of us staying in Florida, what’s one more piece of advice?
Do not go toward Miami — that’s the wrong direction. If you travel at all, go northwest. Most importantly, don’t drive into a rain cell. That’s the only way to see nothing at all.

How long will we need to wait for the next solar eclipse?
From Orlando, the next partial solar eclipse will be visible in January 2028, but it won’t be as deep as the one on April 8. For this much sun blockage, we’ll have to wait until January 2038 — that one will be in progress close to sunrise. The big one in Orlando, where we’re in the path of totality, will be in August 2045.

Like you said, get outside and look up on April 8.
And watch it with other people. Watch with friends. Watch with your spouse. Watch with kids. It’s why we invite everyone to watch from the Reflecting Pond. Moments like this are more memorable when you experience them with others.

As the university grew in enrollment over the decades, so did the programs around the campus, as well as the campus itself. Space research was part of the expansion. While �鶹ӳ����ý had done research and served as a talent pipeline for the space industry, the administration wanted to extend its reach even further. In August 2002, Humberto Campins, Pegasus Professor in the Department of Physics, joined the university as provost research professor of physics and astronomy and head of the Planetary and Space Science Group. Campins joined the university with an extensive research background in asteroids, comets and small planetary bodies. While at the University of Arizona from 1998 to 2002, he was part of a team that submitted a proposal that became the OSIRIS REx mission, the first U.S. mission to collect a sample from an asteroid.

Campins would be tasked with developing the planetary sciences program, though it took a few times to get him to join �鶹ӳ����ý. As Florida Space Grant Consortium director from 1994 to 1998, Campins got to know former professor and department chair Brian Tonner. Tonner pitched the opportunity to Campins, but he had started his job as the program officer at the Research Corporation and as research faculty at the Lunar and Planetary Laboratory of the University of Arizona in Tucson. However, Campins would get a final offer that would lead to him considering moving to Orlando.

“I liked my job in Tucson, and I turned them down, and then that turned into another invitation and another,” Campins says. “I had another invitation to attend a workshop on physics pedagogy. I attended a workshop that turned into a third offer that was good enough that I said, ‘You know what? I might want to take a chance.’”

Lifting Off

Campins’ first two hires brought extensive planetary science research behind them. In 2003, Dan Britt joined �鶹ӳ����ý as a professor of astronomy and planetary sciences, having worked on the Mars Pathfinder mission and done large-scale asteroid research. In 2005, Yan Fernandez was hired as an assistant professor in physics, having studied comets and asteroids for 11 years prior.

The following year, two hires would expand the physics department and �鶹ӳ����ý’s space research goals as Joshua Colwell and Joe Harrington were hired as assistant professors. Colwell came to the university having worked on the NASA Cassini mission since some of its earliest planning stages in 1990 and was part of the design and observation planning for the Ultraviolet Imaging Spectrograph, or UVIS, on the multi-instrument spacecraft. In 2019, Colwell and Richard Jerousek ’06 ’09MS ’18PhD, a former student of Colwell and current physics department lecturer, used UVIS data recorded by Cassini to measure and describe the structure of Saturn’s largest innermost ring, the C Ring.

Harrington led the Spitzer Exoplanet Target of Opportunity Program, which measured exoplanet eclipses and transits with the Spitzer Space Telescope. He was also part of the development of the Bayesian Atmospheric Radiative Transfer, an open-source, reproducible research code for inferring the properties of exoplanet atmospheres, for which he won the 2011 College of Sciences Excellence in Research Award.

Britt, Colwell and Harrington are now Pegasus Professors, with Colwell as physics department chair and Harrington associate vice president for research.

Raising the Profile

As with many start-ups, there were early challenges in developing the planetary sciences program. However, with help from the administration, such as Tonner, M.J. Soileau, CREOL’s founding director, and Michael Johnson, then-dean of the College of Sciences and current provost and executive vice president for Academic Affairs, the program was able to grow over time. The research also helped increase the university’s profile, which helped administrative support.

The 2010s saw �鶹ӳ����ý’s space research evolve through their partnerships with various institutions. In 2012, the Florida Space Institute (FSI) was re-chartered to allow for an extensive research portfolio. That same year, FSI was also relocated from near NASA’s Kennedy Space Center to the Central Florida Research Park in Orlando, closer to �鶹ӳ����ý and its research efforts. FSI also managed the Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico, the largest fully operational radio telescope on the planet, leading to enhanced planetary research and discoveries such as a moon orbiting a near-Earth asteroid. Recently, Noemi Pinilla-Alonso an associate scientist at FSI, was part of a team studying the size and composition of Dinkinesh, an asteroid NASA’s Lucy mission visited this month. Britt is part of the science team for the mission.

A year after FSI was re-chartered, �鶹ӳ����ý’s Center for Lunar and Asteroid Surface Science (CLASS) launched via a $6 million NASA grant in 2013. CLASS facilitated one of �鶹ӳ����ý’s key space contributions: The Exolith Lab. The lab develops and produces Martian, lunar and asteroid regolith simulants and works with NASA in addition to conducting its own research, led by Britt, Zoe Landsman ’11 ’17PhD and Anna Metke.

�鶹ӳ����ý’s Martian formula is based on the chemical signature of the soils on Mars collected by the Curiosity rover, allowing researchers to have a more accurate simulant for the many research uses, such as plant growth, vehicle testing, processing and more.

“It’s really important to have a good handle of the mineralogy of the stuff you’re going to be working with because that really dictates the chemistry and the physical properties of the surface you’re going to be working on,” Britt says.

Research Now and Beyond

Recent studies are pushing �鶹ӳ����ý’s understanding of space even further. In 2020, Kareem Ahmed, an assistant professor in �鶹ӳ����ý’s Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, and his team developed a new rocket propulsion system, leading more power to be generated from the rocket, traveling further while using less fuel and burning cleaner. In 2021, aerospace engineering Associate Professor Tarek Elgohary, along with his research students, used analytical and computational methods and machine learning to ensure spacecraft don’t collide with each other or space junk. The research is supported by the Federal Aviation Administration and Lockheed Martin Space.

Last year, Associate Professor Ranajay Ghosh and his team discovered a way to turn lunar regolith into 3D-printed bricks that could be used during space colonization. Using lunar regolith from the Exolith Lab, the bricks were made by 3D printing and binder jet technology (BJT), an additive manufacturing method that forces out a liquid binding agent (in this case, saltwater) onto a bed of powder.

Future space research will see Professors Kerri Donaldson Hanna and Adrienne Dove lead a robotics mission studying the moon’s Gruithuisen Domes, a previously unexplored area. Launching in 2026, the researchers will examine the domes’ makeup and how dust interacts with the spacecraft and a rover. The $35 million mission will help inform future robotic and human exploration of the moon and may also help researchers better understand Earth’s history and other planets in the solar system.

For Donaldson Hanna, the range of planetary science research within the physics department drew her to �鶹ӳ����ý. She saw intriguing ways she could collaborate with people on various research possibilities.

“Just seeing how committed to space science and space exploration the university itself is, it’s certainly nice and fun to be in an environment where what you’re doing is celebrated and is exciting,” Donaldson Hanna says.

While �鶹ӳ����ý has worked with the space industry since its inception, the work done in the early 2000s helped take the university’s space research closer to the stars. From bringing in new faculty to help shape emerging departments to administrative decisions that would provide an immersive environment for space research, this period began a new era that saw Knight researchers Charge On to further understand our universe.

The unmanned spacecraft was tasked with rendezvousing with asteroid Bennu to retrieve a sample from its surface and return it to Earth — a first-of-its-kind mission for the United States.

That’s expected to happen on Sept. 24, when OSIRIS-REx will jettison a sample capsule containing loose rocks and soil from Bennu that — if all goes according to plan — will deploy parachutes and touch down in the Utah Test and Training Range.

on Sept. 24 around 10:55 a.m. EST.

A lot has happened between the launch in September 2016 and the upcoming release of the sample capsule. After reaching Bennu in December 2018, the spacecraft spent nearly two years orbiting the asteroid while mapping and studying its rugged surface.

That detailed mapping was a crucial step, allowing members of the OSIRIS-REx team back on our home planet to study images and spectral observations of Bennu to find the best location to sample without endangering the spacecraft.

Among the members of the OSIRIS-REx team are three �鶹ӳ����ý scientists: Humberto Campins, a Pegasus Professor of physics and international asteroid expert; Associate Professor of Physics Yan Fernandez, who researches comets and asteroids; and Associate Professor of Physics Kerri Donaldson Hanna, a planetary geologist.

They helped select the sampling site on Bennu and have continued to interpret scientific data from the spacecraft to understand the asteroid’s composition.

“We were surprised in many ways,” Campins says. “All the information that we had before we went to Bennu suggested that once we got there, we should have nice flat areas that were mostly sand or pebbles that the spacecraft could come down safely and sample without any risk of hitting a rock. When we got there what we found was that most of the surface was rocky.”

After careful planning, on Oct. 20, 2020, OSIRIS-REx executed a complicated touch-and-go maneuver during which a robotic arm unfurled, touched the surface of the asteroid and collected roughly 250 grams of the long-sought sample of rocks and dust.

The plan went flawlessly, and OSIRIS-REx departed Bennu in May 2021 on its 2.5-year journey back toward Earth.

“I feel incredibly lucky to have been one of the first people in the world to see the spacecraft observations of asteroid Bennu and then one of the first to see and work with the sample,” Hanna says. “Studies of this sample will tell us about how asteroid Bennu formed from its parent body and evolved into what we see today and will provide us key details on how the Earth’s atmosphere and weather alters meteorites before we collect them and study them on Earth.”

Fernandez says he’s excited for the return of a sample from Bennu.

“Having a sample from a primitive asteroid, and from a location we were able to study well ahead of time — so we know the geologic context of the sample — is really important for testing our ideas about solar system formation and evolution,” he says.

NASA tested a replica of the sample capsule landing in August. When the actual capsule is released from the OSIRIS-REx spacecraft, it will enter Earth’s atmosphere at more than 27,000 mph before deploying parachutes to slow its descent.

That sample recovery will be the culmination of OSIRIS-REx’s seven-year mission — and the beginning of a new one. OSIRIS-REx will be redirected to the asteroid Apophis with a new mission name: OSIRIS-APEX. It’s expected to reach Apophis in 2029.

In April, the spacecraft will focus its cameras on the site it disturbed when it removed a sample of asteroid Bennu’s soil. The images should help researchers understand what kind of impact the disruption had on the surface.

“Part of the reason we are on this mission is to learn more about how asteroids work, because someday we may need to deflect this asteroid or another like it if it poses a threat to Earth,” says Humberto Campins, a �鶹ӳ����ý and a member of OSIRIS-REx’s imaging team. “We need to know that the techniques developed will get the job done. We need to know how these asteroids respond to disruptions.”

Campins is an international expert on asteroids and has been working with colleagues on the team to analyze the images and data collected from the spacecraft cameras since 2010. �鶹ӳ����ý Assistant Professor Kerri Donaldson Hanna is also part of the team. The group is responsible for the analysis of thousands of images from the surface, which principal investigator Dante Lauretta from the University of Arizona used to select the site for sample collection.

In October, the OSIRIS-REx spacecraft executed a complicated touch-and-go maneuver at Bennu’s Nightingale site during which a robotic arm unfurled and touched the surface of the asteroid to collect a sample of rocks and dust.  The spacecraft is scheduled to deliver the sample to Earth in September 2023. OSIRIS-REx will depart asteroid Bennu in May in order to take advantage of the alignment of orbits, which will make for a shorter trip.

“I cannot wait to see what Bennu’s surface looks like after the TAG sampling event in October, particularly how much of the surface was disturbed during sampling and whether or not additional fine particulate materials have been exposed,” Donaldson Hanna says. “And new spectral observations will give us a glimpse of whether or not there is compositional layering on the asteroid.”

Beginning March 6, OSIRIS-REx executed the first of four maneuvers that will get the spacecraft on the trajectory needed for the final flyby to get the last images April 7. After the photo shoot is complete, the team will fire the spacecraft’s engines again to get OSIRIS-REx ready for the two-year journey home, which begins May 10.

Once back on the planet, the researchers will go to work analyzing the regolith sample.

“That’s where the real fun begins,” Campins says. “Until then we have the images and data to study. I’m looking forward to seeing the real thing.”

NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, provides overall mission management, systems engineering, and the safety and mission assurance for OSIRIS-REx. Lauretta is the principal investigator, and the University of Arizona also leads the science team and the mission’s science observation planning and data processing. Lockheed Martin Space in Denver built the spacecraft and provides flight operations. Goddard and KinetX Aerospace are responsible for navigating the OSIRIS-REx spacecraft. OSIRIS-REx is the third mission in NASA’s New Frontiers Program, which is managed by NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, for the agency’s Science Mission Directorate in Washington.

Campins has a bachelor’s degree in astronomy from the University of Kansas and a doctorate in planetary sciences from the University of Arizona. He joined �鶹ӳ����ý in 2002 as a Provost Research Professor of Physics and Astronomy and head of the Planetary and Space Science Group, and has received multiple awards including a Fulbright and was named a Pegasus Professor in 2013. He was one of the first researchers to find evidence of water ice and organic material on an asteroid and has worked with NASA for several decades. His area of research involves asteroids, comets and other small bodies in the solar system.

Donaldson Hanna has a bachelor’s degree in space sciences from the Florida Institute of Technology, and a master’s degree and doctorate in geological sciences from Brown University. Donaldson Hanna is also involved with  several NASA missions including the Lunar Trailblazer mission. She has extensive research experience mostly in Europe where she was recognized for her excellence including the Winton Capital Geophysics Award from the Royal Astronomical Society. She joined �鶹ӳ����ý in 2019. Her research focuses on understanding the formation and evolution of airless bodies such as the moon, Mercury, Mars’ moons, and asteroids.

It’s been a busy day for �鶹ӳ����ý physics Professor Humberto Campins and the rest of the OSIRIS-REx mission team.

Campins gave the science community an update about at the evolving NASA mission to collect an sample from asteroid Bennu and return it to earth. About 2 p.m. he addressed astronomers and other scientists from around the world who are attending the 52nd annual Division of Planetary Sciences meeting that concludes Friday.  Most years, scientists travel to attend the conference and get the latest on developments in their field. Because of COVID-19 organizers shifted to a virtual event this week.

Campins, a member of the NASA mission, shared some new findings with the group, specifically that some of the early images from Bennu suggest that there may be remnants of other asteroids on its surface. In September, the team published a Nature Astronomy article that detailed the discovery of asteroid Vesta remnants on Bennu. Daniella DellaGiustina of the Lunar and Planetary Laboratory at the University of Arizona, Tucson, was the lead author and Campins was a co-author. Campins explained that as the team continues to study images from the ongoing mission they’ve found evidence that there’s even more diversity on Bennu’s surface. It’s another surprise, Campins said. The mission has faced many unexpected circumstances that have caused it to adapt, including it’s touch-and-go maneuver, which was executed last week.

But Campins was only delivering one of the day’s updates about the mission. About 4 p.m. NASA held a virtual press conference via NASA TV to announce more good news.

Last week the OSIRIS-REx spacecraft executed a complicated touch-and-go maneuver during which a robotic arm . The arm collected a sample from the asteroid’s surface, which it is scheduled to bring back to Earth in September 2023.

NASA today announced the team had successfully stowed the spacecraft’s Sample Return Capsule (SRC) and its abundant sample of asteroid Bennu on Wednesday, well ahead of schedule. According to the NASA briefing, “the stowage process, originally scheduled to begin in early November, was expedited when the mission team received images that showed the spacecraft’s collector head overflowing with material.”

Mission principal investigator Dante Lauretta, from the University of Arizona, explained that images taken during the maneuver indicated that the spacecraft collected well over 2 ounces (60 grams) of Bennu’s surface material, and that some of these particles appeared to be slowly escaping from the head. A mylar flap designed to keep the sample inside the head appeared to be wedged open. Lauretta said they wanted to make sure to secure the sample and prevent further loss, so a decision was made to accelerate the stowage process.

The team, including the project lead at Lockheed Martin Space in Littleton, Colorado, spent the 36 hours completing the storage of the sample and are now turning to making preparations to bring the sample home.

Campins, a member of the OSIRIS REx team that advised about where best to collect the sample, said he’s thrilled to know the sample is now secure.

The team continues to study the images and is looking forward to next phase of the mission. Now it’s all about getting the sample home, Dante said.

The material collected, once studied, may shed more light on how the asteroid and our solar system formed.

�鶹ӳ����ý is counting down the days. He is part of the mission team led by University of Arizona Professor Dante S. Lauretta.

“This is it,” Campins says. “The past 10 years of my life have led to this moment. I’m eager to see it go well and to see what we discover in the sample when it comes back home.”

If successful, the sample will be back on earth by 2023 and scientists will have a chance to examine it. While the Japanese Space Agency has completed one asteroid sample return mission and has another on its way back to Earth, this is NASA’s first mission to retrieve an asteroid sample.

Campins, who led a team that first discovered water ice on an asteroid, has been working with the OSIRIS-REx team since 2010 and they have been especially busy since the spacecraft launched from Kennedy Space Center in 2016. But he’s been chasing asteroids his entire career, because they could hold the keys to understanding the formation of our solar system. And for Campins, it’s a mystery that needs to be solved.

Asteroids are believed to contain minerals and other materials from the birth of the solar system. Samples from various asteroids could help scientists understand how our planet formed and provide a better framework as the human race begins to explore other planets.

Bennu was selected because it is a primitive asteroid and potentially rich with materials from the early days, including organic molecules that can help us understand how life formed on Earth and possibly elsewhere. This asteroid could also pose a threat to Earth in the next 160 years depending on how its orbit evolves, since it is a potentially hazardous near-Earth object. NASA monitors and is particularly interested in asteroids that can pose a risk to earth.

The mission has been a wild ride for astronomers. Almost from the start, OSIRIS REx has produced unexpected results. On the spacecraft’s initial approach to Bennu, it took images and collected data that threw the scientists for a loop. One set of images showed the asteroid ejecting particles into space. Another sweep of images resulted in boulders much bigger than anticipated on Bennu’s surface and much more closely scattered throughout. The team studied the data and has come up with hypotheses for each unexpected turn and adjusted the mission. That’s part of the reason why the Touch-and-Go maneuver initially scheduled for August was delayed until October.

“Mother Nature keeps surprising us,” Campins says. “But that’s the amazing part of science. I can’t wait to see what we discover next and to get to work understanding why it works the way it does.”

Kerri Donaldson Hanna, an assistant professor of physics at �鶹ӳ����ý, is also part of the mission. She is part of the Spectral Analysis Working Group (SAWG). She analyzes the spectral observations from the spacecraft, which helped select the target site for the Touch-and-Go maneuver. The sample retrieved will help us better understanding how Bennu formed.

The planetary scientist, who is an international expert on asteroids, predicted a finding from NASA’s OSIRIS-REx mission to asteroid Bennu — remnants of another asteroid scattered across its surface.

The spacecraft took images and made observations of Bennu when it arrived in December 2019.  The spacecraft’s mission is to collect a sample of Bennu and return it to Earth in 2023. The touch-and-go sample collection maneuver is scheduled for October 2020.

“Some people told me there was a very low chance of finding bright remnants of another asteroid on Bennu,” says Campins, who has been studying asteroids for more than 30 years. “But nature went ahead and surprised us. It’s even more interesting than what I was expecting. And it means we just have so much more to learn about how our solar system developed.”

The discovery is documented this week in the journal Nature Astronomy.

Daniella DellaGiustina of the Lunar and Planetary Laboratory at the University of Arizona, Tucson  and Hannah Kaplan of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center are the lead authors of the paper. They work, respectively, in OSIRIS-REx’s imaging and spectroscopy groups, which focus on determining the structure and composition of the asteroid. Campins is also a member of the OSIRIS-REx Science Team and is a co-author.

It is thought that most small asteroids are rubble piles, resulting from collisions. Bennu is itself such a rubble pile, derived from the disruption of a larger parent asteroid. Impact processes were very important in the formation of planets, moons, satellites, comets and asteroids in our solar system. But how exactly it all happened is still unclear and this discovery helps us understand this process better.

“We found six boulders ranging in size from 5 to 14 feet (about 1.5 to 4.3 meters) scattered across Bennu’s southern hemisphere and near the equator,” DellaGiustina says. “These boulders are much brighter than the rest of Bennu and match material from (asteroid) Vesta.”

The team’s working hypothesis is that Bennu inherited this material from its (larger) parent asteroid after a fragment from Vesta impacted Bennu’s parent asteroid. When the parent asteroid was catastrophically disrupted, a portion of the Vesta material (crystalline rocks made of a mineral called pyroxene) was pulled back by gravity and collected onto the surface of the newly formed Bennu rubble pile, according to Kaplan.

“The fact is that these exogenous pieces were not from just any asteroid, but they were from asteroid Vesta, arguably the most recognizable asteroid in the belt.”

The new information sheds light on the intricate orbital dance of asteroids and on the violent origin of Bennu, according to a NASA press release related to the new discovery.

From the NASA Release

The unusual boulders on Bennu first caught the team’s eye in images from the OSIRIS-REx Camera Suite (OCAMS). The boulders appeared extremely bright, with some almost ten times brighter than their surroundings. The team analyzed the light from the boulders using the OSIRIS-REx Visible and Infrared Spectrometer (OVIRS) instrument to get clues to their composition. A spectrometer separates light into its component colors.

Since elements and compounds have distinct, signature patterns of bright and dark across a range of colors, they can be identified using a spectrometer. The signature from the bright boulders was characteristic of the mineral pyroxene, similar to what is seen on Vesta and the vestoids, smaller asteroids that are fragments blasted from Vesta when it sustained significant asteroid impacts.

As asteroids move through the solar system, their orbits can be altered in many ways, including the pull of gravity from planets and other objects, meteoroid impacts, and even  slight pressure from sunlight. The new result helps pin down the complex journey Bennu and other asteroids have traced through the solar system.

Based on its orbit, several studies indicate Bennu was delivered from the inner region of the main asteroid belt via a well-known gravitational pathway that can take objects from the inner main belt to near-Earth orbits. There are two inner main belt asteroid families (Polana and Eulalia) that look like Bennu: dark and rich in carbon, making them likely candidates for Bennu’s parent. Likewise, the formation of the vestoids is tied to the formation of the Veneneia and Rheasilvia impact basins on Vesta, at roughly about two billion years ago and approximately one billion years ago, respectively.

“Future studies of asteroid families [and] the origin of Bennu must reconcile the presence of Vesta-like material, as well as the apparent lack of other asteroid types. We look forward to the returned sample, which hopefully contains pieces of these intriguing rock types,” says Dante Lauretta, OSIRIS-REx principal investigator at the University of Arizona, Tucson.

�鶹ӳ����ý physics Professor Humberto Campins is part of NASA’s OSIRIS-REx mission, which aims to bring back to Earth a sample from asteroid Bennu, which is between Mars and Jupiter. The near-earth asteroid could pose a hazard to the planet sometime in the future, but because of its location may hold clues about how the solar system formed. The attempt to recover a sample from an asteroid is a first for NASA.

The mission is being led by the University of Arizona in Tucson. The spacecraft is expected to perform the “touch and go” maneuver to collect a sample in October. It’s the climax of a mission 10 years in the making.

Campins, an international expert on asteroids, is part of the imaging team and he temporarily relocated to Tucson to avoid travel back and forth from Florida during the pandemic. He didn’t want to risk getting sick and missing the big moment. Then he had an idea:  His move could give students an amazing opportunity to not only hear about concepts and absorb book knowledge, but to get a first-hand look at science in action.

“Because I can teach remotely [during the pandemic], it provided me a golden opportunity for my students to live a NASA mission with me,” says Campins, who is leading the Comets, Asteroids and Meteorites class.

Campins kicked off the semester Tuesday via Zoom with a lecture that began with a single slide. It had the phrase “Welcome to an Unusual Semester” on it. The word “unusual” was crossed out. On the next line it said “Welcome to a Unique Semester,” but “unique” was crossed out. On the final line it said “Welcome to a Historic Semester.”

“This is a historic time in so many ways,” Campins says. “There’s a lot of loss, but there are also moments of opportunity. This is the most exciting time of my career. Nature is surprising us and there is excitement in that. I want to share that with my students and there’s no better way than doing it right from where it is happening.”

Campins promises that his students will get to hear about the mission in real time and he plans to provide a tour of the facility, which is not open to the public. The students will also get to hear about how scientists collaborate, argue and resolve disagreements.

“They’ll get to hear about it all,” he says.

The students will also have to keep up. Aside from OSIRIS-REx, Japan’s Hayabusa2 is on its way back from asteroid Ryugu with a sample. Ryugu is located between Earth and Mars and the Japanese Space Agency mission collected the sample in 2019. The information expected from those missions and the data already collected from the European Space Agency’s Rosetta mission to comet Churyumov-Gerasimenko should keep the students busy. This will all be part of class discussions.

The OSIRIS-REx mission has already made news. Several peer-reviewed papers in the journals Nature and Science have been published based on observations made getting to Bennu.

“There are a few more surprises we’ll be sharing very soon,” Campins said. “And we’ll have to see what else we find when we actually complete the mission. My students are going to be among the first who will get to digest and discuss what we are publishing. For scientists, it doesn’t get better than this and I hope my students get a taste for it and continue to pursue it.”

�鶹ӳ����ý Professor Humberto Campins and Assistant Professor Kerri Donaldson Hanna are part of the science team on the mission, which is a first-of-its-kind mission for the United States. The spacecraft is scheduled to perform a touch-and-go operation, extending the spacecraft’s arm to collect a small sample of asteroid Bennu in August and then return it to Earth in 2023.

During the dress rehearsal completed earlier this month, the team tested those maneuvers necessary to collect the sample. .

“The photos are just amazing,” Campins says. “This is a very significant step that brings OSIRIS-REx closer to our sampling maneuver in August. The dress rehearsal went better than expected. The spacecraft successfully demonstrated its ability to fine tune its approach to Bennu.”

When the spacecraft launched in September 2016 from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, the team, led by University of Arizona Professor Dante S. Lauretta, expected a somewhat smooth asteroid surface based on data collected about Bennu. But when the spacecraft arrived in December 2018 it encountered several surprises.

Particles were being ejected from its surface and it  was covered in boulders of varying sizes. The team had to make several major adjustments from its approach to the asteroid to how it mapped the surface. Campins and others on the imaging team spent months analyzing the photos to determine the best spots for collection. It became obvious they were not going to get a clear 50-meter diameter region to collect the sample. The primary sampling site, named Nightingale is an area of about 10-meters, and is the best option.

“It looks good for the sampling event in August,” Campins says.

Asteroid Bennu was selected because data indicated it is a carbonaceous primitive asteroid that may contain material from the earliest history of our solar system. The asteroid is expected to contain the molecular precursors to the origin of life and the Earth’s oceans.

While Bennu has a very small chance to impact Earth in the final decade of the next century, learning more about the composition of this asteroid will be important information for plans to prevent any asteroid impact.

The team leading NASA’s OSIRIS-REx mission to the near-Earth asteroid this month published a study in the journal Science that describes three potential mechanisms for the activity on Bennu. The team discovered the unexpected ejections in January, shortly after the spacecraft achieved orbit around the asteroid.

University of Arizona Professor Dante S. Lauretta leads the OSIRIS-REx mission, which launched from Kennedy Space Center in September 2016. Its goal is to collect a sample of the asteroid and return to earth by 2023. The spacecraft is expected to perform the touch-and-go maneuver on Bennu in 2020. It is NASA’s first mission to retrieve a sample.

�鶹ӳ����ý astrophysicist Humberto Campins is part of the imaging team on the mission. He says the team has spent time looking at plumes of particles ejected from the surface, because as a potentially hazardous asteroid it is imperative that scientists understand how it behaves.

The Science article, authored by Lauretta and C. W. Hergenrother with dozens of co-authors outlines three mechanisms, which not only suggest how the ejection occurs, but also provides a snapshot of the bizarre nature of the asteroid.

Particles could be launching off the asteroid’s surface because of drastic fluctuations in temperature on the asteroid. Bennu reaches temperatures of about 400 degrees Kelvin (260.3 degrees Farenheit) at noon and then sees drops of about 150 degrees during its night. The asteroid rotates from day to night every 4.3 hours.

Another potential reason for the ejection of particles could be tied to the dehydration of clay minerals on the surface of the asteroid. The surface is covered with boulders of varying sizes that are warmed up by the sun and can crack or exfoliate.

Or the ejections could all be related to active impacts on the surface. Because Bennu only has 1/100,000^th  of the gravity of Earth, it requires very little energy to launch particles into space – about the amount it takes to break a cracker, Campins says.

“It is important for us to know how it works for a very practical reason,” Campins said. “If we need to deflect it away from Earth, in say 160 years, we will need to know exactly how to do it, so we need to know everything about the asteroid. But there’s also a scientific reason. Bennu was selected because we suspect it has primitive organic material on it. That can help us answer questions about the formation of life on Earth. This unexpected observation [of ejections] shows that we have so much more to learn.”

The team continues to collect and analyze data from Bennu to determine the best target site for the touch-and-go sample collection maneuver next year.

“This mission is a perfect moment in time,” Campins said. “The instruments available, the team of experts assembled and the orbit selected gave us this unique look at the asteroid that let us observe the particle-ejection events. Now the question is: Is Bennu unusual or is this happening on most other primitive asteroids and we’ve just never been in the right place to see it until now.”

Campins has spent his entire career chasing asteroids, comets and other celestial bodies. He conducts research at observatories around the world, including Arizona, Hawaii, Chile, France, Spain and Vatican City. In 2010, he headed the team that discovered water ice and organic molecules on the asteroid 24 Themis and later on 65 Cybele. It’s that expertise that led Lauretta to invite Campins to the OSIRIS-REx team in 2010.