TUCSON, Ariz. (KGUN) — NASA announced earlier this week its OSIRIS-REx team — which recovered samples from the ancient asteroid Bennu — has won the prestigious Robert J. Collier Trophy.
The seven-year mission, led by the University of Arizona, was officially complete on Sept. 24, 2023 when a parachute carrying the samples touched down in the Utah desert.
The particles brought back totaled over 120 grams — more than any other mission in history.
Project Manager and Software Engineer on the project Carina Bennett's team worked on processing photos OSIRIS captured and creating maps of the asteroids.
She said she remembers “watching that sample, capsule tumbling through the air, just anticipating waiting for the big moment when the parachute would deploy."
It was an emotional moment for everyone, including the public watching in-person and at home.
“It didn’t just contain rocks and atoms from the early solar system," Principal Investigator Dante Lauretta said. "It was filled with the hopes and dreams of thousands of people who worked to make this mission a success.”
And it wasn't just the amount of samples they were able to successfully recover but also the size of some of the particles.
“We were expecting things that were mostly two centimeters in size, so to get something this big is really exciting and there’s going to be a lot of science in the future," Bennett explained, holding a 3-D print of the largest asteroid piece.
These accomplishments didn't go unnoticed by National Aeronautic Association, the organization that awarded the OSIRIS-REx with the Collier Trophy for the "greatest achievement in aerospace and astronautics in America," according to NASA.
The whole team will be honored at a special dinner on June 13 in Washington D.C.
Past recipients include:
- Chuck Yeager, the first person to break the sound barrier
- Crews of Apollo 8, 11 and 15 missions
- NASA's Ingenuity Mars Helicopter
“It’s an amazing crowd to be associated with," noted Lauretta. "And it really shows the complexity of the task, the importance of the mission and the recognition the community is bestowing upon us.”
The leads of the team are passing the torch to the next generation as the OSIRIS spacecraft takes on another mission as well as a new name: OSIRIS-APEX will travel to asteroid Apophis to continue the study.
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Jeff Rosenfield joined KGUN 9 in July of 2022. He has a background in writing, as well as photography and other visual mediums. He graduated from the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism & Mass Communication at the Arizona State University in May of 2022.
