NASA’s OSIRIS-REx must avoid ‘Mount Doom’ to return a sample of the asteroid Bennu
SAN FRANCISCO — After a year of meticulously mapping the asteroid Bennu’s surprisingly boulder-littered surface (SN: 3/19/19), NASA has finally picked a sample collection site. OSIRIS-REx, on NASA’s first mission to bring a bit of asteroid back to Earth, will touch down at a site called Nightingale, inside a dark, relatively smooth crater in Bennu’s northern hemisphere. “What really drove the decision for me, here, on this site was the scientific value,” OSIRIS-REx principal investigator Dante Lauretta said December 12 in a news conference at the American Geophysical Union annual meeting. Because Nightingale lies so far north, its surface material is chillier than other parts of the asteroid. “Cool is good because we’re interested in organic material, and we’re interested in hydrated minerals,” which are generally better preserved in cooler conditions, said Lauretta, of the University of Arizona in Tucson. Investigating that material may offer insight into early solar system conditions and hint whether an asteroid like Bennu could have delivered the chemical precursors for life to...