Asteroid mission will carry student X-ray experiment
At 7:05 p.m. (EDT) today, NASA plans to launch a spacecraft to a near-Earth asteroid named Bennu. Among that spacecraft’s five instruments is a student experiment that will use X-rays to help determine Bennu’s surface composition. The Regolith X-Ray Imaging Spectrometer, or REXIS, was developed by researchers and students at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (CfA) and Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). It is only the second student experiment to fly on a NASA interplanetary mission. “With Harvard undergraduates, we designed a wide-field X-ray imaging instrument that was built by students at MIT,” said Harvard astronomer and deputy instrument scientist Josh Grindlay. Richard Binzel at MIT is an instrument scientist for REXIS. “A principal goal for REXIS was educating students,” said instrument scientist and Harvard astronomer Jaesub Hong. View all posts in Science & Health Explore: Calculating the odds of life between the Big Bang and the final fade Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics Communications |...