OSIRIS-REx

U of A Regents Professor Dante Lauretta says he is "amazed by the discoveries we've made" since the OSIRIS-REx spacecraft delivered an asteroid sample to Earth last year.

OSIRIS-REx sample scientists took a deep dive into the rocks and dust returned from asteroid Bennu. They found that the sample is rich in carbon, nitrogen and organic compounds – essential components for life as we know it.

For their contributions to the field of astrobiology, Dante Lauretta and Daniel Apai have been elected 2023 Fellows of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

NASA scientists last week removed the two stuck fasteners on the sample container that had prevented researchers from accessing much of OSIRIS-REx's asteroid Bennu sample.

Under the leadership of the University of Arizona's Dani Mendoza DellaGiustina, the former OSIRIS-REx spacecraft sets off on a journey to study asteroid Apophis and take advantage of the asteroid's 2029 flyby of Earth.

At the university's Kuiper-Arizona Laboratory for Astromaterials Analysis, a suite of instruments allows researchers to study the particles collected by the OSIRIS-REx mission the down to the atomic scale.

Data collected ahead of the OSIRIS-REx sample return capsule's plunge into Earth's atmosphere will help test algorithms used to pinpoint asteroids that could impact Earth.