To Bennu and Back: First Results from the OSIRIS-REx Asteroid Sample Return Mission

In September 2023, NASA’s OSIRIS-REx spacecraft completed a 7-year mission to return a pristine sample of the asteroid Bennu to Earth. Bennu is rich in carbon and water and holds important clues about the processes and events that shaped the evolution of habitable environments in the early Solar System. I’ll talk about the initial curation and analysis of the returned samples and what we’ve discovered about the composition of Bennu so far.