Final fall, a NASA spacecraft named OSIRIS-REx dropped a capsule containing greater than 120 grams of area mud into the Utah desert. That materials got here from Bennu, an asteroid that, a billion years in the past, broke off from a much bigger world which will have hosted liquid water. Finding out this materials will make clear the position that asteroids may need performed in bringing life’s components to Earth.
For Dante Lauretta, a planetary scientist on the College of Arizona and the mission chief, retrieving the pattern spelled the top of an period. Because the mission started in 2016, Dr. Lauretta has been immersed in all issues OSIRIS-REx. Frames on the wall of his workplace showcase covers of the journals Nature and Science that featured the journey to Bennu and again. Subsequent to them is an oversize cowl of his new e-book, “The Asteroid Hunter: A Scientist’s Journey to the Dawn of Our Solar System.” Half mission report, half memoir, the e-book tells the story of how two historic carbon atoms — one on Bennu, one entangled within the genetic code of Dr. Lauretta — discover one another once more.
After dropping off the pattern, the OSIRIS-REx spacecraft continued its voyage through the solar system, and Dr. Lauretta handed off the keys. He lately spoke to The New York Instances about life after OSIRIS-REx and the way the mission’s impression carries on. The next dialog has been edited for brevity and readability.
What have you ever been as much as since OSIRIS-REx’s ultimate act?
The weeks after Earth return had been all Houston, all day lengthy. The disassembly of the asteroid pattern collector was going slower than we anticipated, but it surely was enjoyable and historic. I obtained to go within the clear room and be there for these moments once we first laid eyes on the pattern. By early November, I had among the pattern in my lab in Arizona.
College students in my astrobiology class obtained lectures reside from Johnson House Heart in Houston. I took them round with my telephone, and the pattern processors came to visit and danced round of their bunny fits. It was wonderful.
Why was disassembly taking so lengthy?
There have been a few screws that had been caught, and we didn’t have instruments that will preserve the pattern pristine. Arduous instruments have carbon metal in them, and we didn’t need these instruments within the clear room due to contamination — carbon is of curiosity for astrobiology and origins of life and all of the enjoyable science that we’re doing. So the instruments we use are delicate. And you would see the screwdriver’s head beginning to distort whereas attempting to take away the fasteners.
Ultimately, we simply determined to undergo a flap on the top of the pattern collector, and pulled out round 70 grams of stuff. That was already greater than we promised NASA we’d carry again. Then we took a while to construct a screwdriver we may use, and at last cracked the factor open in January.
Any surprises with the pattern to this point?
In 2020, we wrote a paper about large white veins — like a meter lengthy, 10 centimeters thick — on the rocks and boulders of Bennu. We thought these had been carbonates that fashioned in water, which is thrilling. Carbon-bearing minerals are present in organic programs.
Once we obtained the rocks again, a few of them had this white, crusty materials throughout them. I used to be so excited as a result of I assumed we had gotten the carbonates. However after I obtained some grains within the lab, it was phosphate, a compound that incorporates the aspect phosphorus. And it was wealthy in sodium.
We had a pupil have a look at one grain underneath an electron microscope, and it was cracked and desiccated. It appeared like a mud flat after the water evaporates, when it will get all fractured and shrinks up.
So did we get it mistaken on the asteroid? I don’t know. Have been these veins really phosphates? We’re nonetheless chasing that down.
What would it not imply for these veins to be product of phosphorus somewhat than carbon?
Phosphorus has a particular place in my coronary heart, due to the astrobiology work I did as a graduate pupil. It’s one of many “large six” parts of life, together with hydrogen, carbon, nitrogen, oxygen and sulfur. Because the least considerable, phosphorus supplies essential clues into how the aspect obtained concerned in biology.
I learn a paper about sodium-rich phosphates popping out of the plumes of Enceladus, one among Saturn’s moons. After which a study got here out about soda lakes in Canada, that are probably the most phosphate-rich lakes on Earth that we all know. And it had precisely the identical chemistry.
I don’t know if Bennu is a precise analog, however this sort of fluid chemistry is essential. This may very well be proof of liquid water evaporating away with excessive concentrations of phosphorus, a key ingredient for the origin of life. And different teams are discovering comparable chemistry in biologically essential environments, one round Saturn and one on Earth. This can be a dream come true.
How did your e-book come about?
I got here up with the thought of writing a extra private model of OSIRIS-REx in 2018, earlier than the mission had even gotten to Bennu. We collected the pattern in 2020 and had two and a half years to cruise earlier than it landed on Earth, so I spent these years writing.
The e-book ends with the pattern return in Utah, so the 2 epilogues weren’t written till the week after. On the flight from Utah to Houston, I put some earbuds in and simply narrated every thing that had occurred over the previous 24 hours. After which I wrote the finale of the 2 carbon atoms, the common thread that underlies the story, later in my resort room.
Your e-book is about OSIRIS-REx, but it surely’s additionally about you. How did your childhood put together you to discover the photo voltaic system?
I grew up in Arizona, and by the point I used to be 12, it was simply my mother elevating three of us. I used to be a lot older than my two brothers. We didn’t have a TV. There was nothing however the desert for leisure. So I spent lots of time exploring it, discovering every kind of wonderful little secrets and techniques.
I’d come throughout Native American constructions and petroglyph partitions, and actually felt a connection in time to those that had come earlier than me. And I began fascinated about, properly, who got here earlier than them? And the way far again can you’re taking that query? I bear in mind the primary time I discovered a trilobite — that was wonderful. I questioned why it wasn’t round anymore. What occurred to it? Might that occur to us?
That is after I began to understand geology. There are tales within the rocks. Since then, I’ve at all times been an explorer. After I obtained older, I’d go backpacking, tenting, on hikes and so forth. I simply liked going someplace, and I needed to go the place nobody had gone earlier than.
After I did an expedition in Antarctica, I felt like that was it, I’d by no means get extra distant than that. Then OSIRIS-REx got here alongside, and that was simply one other degree — the ultimate frontier.
What’s subsequent for you?
I’m the primary director of the brand new Arizona Astrobiology Center. And it’s banging! It’s actually a group heart, as a result of individuals are coming to us. Undergraduate college students are flocking. Academics and directors from Ok-12 faculties wish to know the way they will get engaged.
I like getting to hang around with college students, which I gave up doing lots of throughout OSIRIS-REx. It’s very accessible for them to get entangled. We will prepare college students and have them on an electron microscope, taking a look at materials from Bennu, in days. Being on this new surroundings with the coed and group focus is fantastic.
I feel that is the end result of what folks can do once we unite with a typical imaginative and prescient. OSIRIS-REx is a lot greater than me. Folks inform me how inspiring what we did was, and the way proud they’re of me, this workforce and this nation. I really feel like I’ve been a part of one thing unbelievable, wonderful and highly effective.
