MIT’s REXIS and Bennu’s watery surface.NASA’s OSIRIS-REx sample-return spacecraft, carrying MIT instrument, arrived at an asteroid in December; now begins the science to select a sampling location.After flying in space for more than two years, NASA’s spacecraft OSIRIS-REx (Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification, Security-Regolith Explorer) recently entered into orbit around its target, the asteroid Bennu. Asteroids like Bennu are considered to be leftover debris from the formation of our solar system. So, in the first mission of its kind flown by NASA, OSIRIS-REx is looking to retrieve a sample and bring it to Earth. In addition to several instruments onboard the spacecraft is an MIT student-built one called the REgolith X-Ray Imaging Spectrometer (REXIS), which will provide data to help select the sampling site, as well as other mission objectives, including characterizing the asteroid and its behaviors and comparing those to ground-based observations. REXIS is a joint project between the MIT Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences (EAPS), MIT Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AeroAstro), the Harvard College Observatory, the MIT Kavli Institute for Astrophysics and Space Research, and MIT Lincoln Laboratory. Shortly after arriving at Bennu, OSIRIS-REx researchers announced that they had identified water on the asteroid, possibly impacting the selection of the sampling site. EAPS spoke with Richard Binzel — an expert on asteroids at MIT and co-investigator on this mission, leading the development of REXIS — about the instrument’s role and what this finding means for the future use of similar devices. Binzel is also the professor of planetary sciences in EAPS with a joint appointment in AeroAstro, and a Margaret MacVicar Faculty Fellow. - Study24x7
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MIT’s REXIS and Bennu’s watery surface.NASA’s OSIRIS-REx sample-return spacecraft, carrying MIT instrument, arrived at an asteroid in December; now begins the science to select a sampling location.

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