Dean chats with Dr. Nicole Lunning from NASA's OSIRIS-REx mission, who explains the challenges and successes of collecting samples from asteroid Bennu. Plus, a recap of the April 2024 solar eclipse!
"Dr. Nicole Lunning is the Lead OSIRIS-REx Sample Curator within the Astromaterials Research and Exploration Science (ARES) division of NASA Johnson Space Center. Nicole started at NASA in March of 2020 shortly after returning from collecting meteorites in Antarctica as part of 2019-2020 field team of the US-based Antarctic Search for Meteorites program (ANSMET)."
Additional resources referenced in this episode:
- First U.S. Sample Return Mission to an Asteroid Launches
- Watch NASA's OSIRIS-REx Spacecraft Attempt to Capture a Sample of Asteroid Bennu
- OSIRIS-REx Asteroid Sample Return (Official 4K NASA Broadcast)
- NASA Connect - ETPTAS - Hands On Activity - Eclipse Simulator
- 2024 Total Solar Eclipse: Through the Eyes of NASA (Official Broadcast)
EPISODE TRANSCRIPT:
Looking Up is transcribed using a combination of AI speech recognition and human editors. It may contain errors. Please check the corresponding audio before quoting in print.
Dean: So we did it. April 8th, 2024. Oh, man. Experiencing totality. This was my third total solar eclipse, and it was spectacular.
Weatherman: So really, it's been phenomenal. We've lucked out in general with the weather all of today, too. That was the biggest concern I had going into the day here. It's been beautiful views up and down here, and so really fantastic to see this.
Dean: And I was exactly where I wanted to be. The Armstrong Air and Space Museum in Wapakoneta, Ohio, hometown of astronaut Neil Armstrong. And on that April day, I and 10, 000 other eclipse chasers were going crazy. From the studios of Cincinnati Public Radio, I'm your host Dean Regas, and this is Looking Up. The show that takes you deep into the cosmos or just to the telescope in your backyard to learn more about what makes this amazing universe of ours so great. My guest today is Dr. Nicole Lunning from NASA's OSIRIS REx mission.
Well, we're gonna double up on topics today since we have the great pleasure of speaking to Dr. Nicole Lunning about asteroids, the wonderful tiny worlds that number in the hundreds of thousands in the asteroid belt. But, We simply must, absolutely must, do an eclipse recap. I know the eclipse was a while ago and maybe you're getting sick of seeing everybody's pictures and videos on social media of that day and where they were and all that stuff, but hey, You know, you and I, we haven't talked since then.
I got a lot to share about the eclipse. I hope everybody got to see it because the weather was pretty amazing all around this area, part of Ohio and Indiana. And where I went is Wapakoneta, Ohio. And so how I picked this was probably you can remember from those maps of the path of totality. And there was always like this kind of blue line that if you're on that blue line in the center of the path, that's where you get the longest eclipse.
And so it was pretty much right on the center line, the Armstrong Air and Space Museums there. And I was talking to their executive director, Dante Centuori. And so a couple of days before the eclipse, Dante gives me a call and says, Hey, Dean, are you coming? And. I still hadn't decided. I mean, I'm talking two days ahead of time.
I still hadn't decided because the weather forecasting was so like up in the air. We really didn't know where it was going to be clear. And I got to say weather predictors out there. Hmm. I'm not going to call any of you out. But Some of you were way off. I'm just going to tell you this right now. And you got me unnecessarily nervous because it was such a beautiful day everywhere.
News Anchor: Will we be able to see the Eclipse, Matt?
Weatherman: Maybe. Oh. Yeah, back to you guys.
Dean: So I finally pulled the trigger, I said, okay, I'm coming to Wapakoneta. I think I told Dante Sunday night, the night before the Eclipse, basically. And so he had it all set up, we had a parking spot reserved.
And I got there pretty early and there was still probably a thousand people there already at like 10 o'clock in the morning. The eclipse didn't start till about one. I got there so early that I had to wait a few hours before the, even the partial stage of the eclipse starts. And you see that first little bite of the moon in front of the sun.
And that's the first part where you think, okay, this is happening. This is happening right on time. This was an interesting thing. I want to share some of these observations. Cause like I said, this is my third total solar eclipse And this one was a little bit different in a lot of ways. And the first one was, if you were facing towards the sun and the moon just before totality, you were staring down the shadow.
Like, you were facing to the south, southwest, and that was the direction that the shadow was coming at you, which is different than it was in 2017. You weren't, like, looking down the shadow. And so I don't know if you notice this, but I was looking that way and the whole sky down below the sun was this really dark gray, silverish, even purplish color.
So you were looking at the shadow as. It was coming towards you. So then the last little rays of sunlight come around the moon. You get what's called the diamond ring and then whoosh darkness. You're plunged into this eerie twilight. Oh man, it was so awesome. And so I tried to get pictures and I tried to get a little video.
I got to say the best thing I got was the audio. People are going crazy. And I mean, it was like for the whole four minutes of totality, continuous yelling, continuous screaming, continuous crying. I think you can hear somebody say, I think I'm about to cry. I think they say that that wasn't me. I was already crying.
So I wasn't talking. And. It wasn't the corona that did it. That's that wispy, cloudy stuff that streams out from the sides of the sun and the moon. It wasn't the corona that did it this time. It was prominences. And I heard from so many people saying, what were those pink things sticking out around the eclipse?
And there was one big one at the bottom. And that's where I could hear a lot of people at the Armstrong museum were just saying, what's the pink thing now? What is the pink thing? And those were the solar prominences. These are eruptions on the surface of the sun. that were visible with the naked eye. So you're actually seeing solar eruptions.
The biggest one was at the bottom, but there's also one at the top, and on the left, and the right. And there was one thing that happened that was very weird. It was about 20 or 30 seconds before totality ended. And I want you to think back. If you experienced something similar, I heard a Boom. It sounded like a cannon shot or far away firework.
Did you hear something like that? The reason why I'm asking is because I didn't know what it was. I was still in kind of a weird eclipse mania, so I barely remember even hearing it. But I do remember saying, somebody like, Firing a cannon to signal that eclipse is over. And it turns out that a lot of people heard that they heard this same kind of cannon shot.
And what it was, was a sonic boom. This was the inversion of the atmosphere to such an extent from hot to cold, the cold, the hot that it made a boom. Did you hear it? I never heard that there's such a thing existed, but it does. And I heard it and it was pretty cool. So after the sonic boom then totality was winding down.
You could see the light starting to come back. And I gotta make a little confession here is that I looked extra. I looked a little extra. I looked a little extra in the beginning. And I looked a little extra at the end. And I know you're not supposed to do that. You're not supposed to look until the whole sun is blocked out completely.
And I'm a really bad influence, but I looked a little early. Five seconds, maybe 10 seconds. And I looked a little late.
Child: We know you should never look directly at the sun, even during an eclipse.
Dean: But it was amazing to see that diamond ring on the outside going out. Cause a lot of people might've missed the diamond ring going in, but caught the diamond ring going out.
And then. You're back into daylight again, as it slowly comes back to normal for me, I was definitely speechless. I was definitely moved. And I, you know, just being around so many people during this was so cool too. So now I got to mark your calendar for the next one. I'll see if it's going to be Greenland, Iceland, or Spain for 2026.
So, now we're on to our second topic, and that is asteroids. And asteroids are these rocks that are the size of, you know, like a house up to a couple hundred miles wide. Most of the asteroids live between Mars orbit and Jupiter's orbit, so pretty far out there. But we also get a lot of asteroids that come closer to Earth too.
These are called near Earth asteroids. And then the ones that everybody's really watching out for are potentially hazardous asteroids. These are the asteroids with the very unlikely, but still possible chance of hitting the Earth someday.
Movie trailer voices: This new one you're tracking, how big? It's the size of Texas, Mr. President. It's what we call a global killer. The end of mankind. Directed by Michael Bay.
Dean: I'm happy to tell you guys that there are no Asteroids that are scheduled to hit us that we know of. I don't know if that makes you feel better. It makes me feel a little bit better. And hopefully our guests today will make us feel better about that as well.
Getting an actual asteroid on earth is a little bit tricky because the only way that we could do that is to. Currently is we have to wait for them to come to us. And so a lot of meteorites that fall to earth, almost all the meteorites that fall to earth come from asteroids in the asteroid belt. Except for now, we have a new mission that brought us back a sample of an asteroid and brought it back toa very clean environment.
So you're going to be hearing about the clean rooms that the asteroid particles are going into. This is to keep them free from contamination from earthly things. And so what are we going to find in this sample return? Well, Nicole, thanks so much for joining me today.
Dr. Nicole Lunning: Happy to be here.
Dean: So the OSIRIS REx mission is ambitious to say the least.
I mean, what was the travel plan to get to an asteroid and then return a sample back to Earth?
Dr. Nicole Lunning: So, it is a fairly complicated acronym, but OSIRIS REx is Origin Spectral Interpretation Resource Identification and Security Regolith Explorer. So the mission was launched in 2016.
NASA official: One, and liftoff of OSIRIS REx.
Dr. Nicole Lunning: It took several years to get to the asteroid, and then the spacecraft orbited and extensively mapped the surface of the asteroid, at which point The team selected multiple landing locations, and they ended up having a harder time than they expected. They were expecting to see lots of fine material, like a sandy beach, and instead the surface of Bennu was covered in boulders.
So it became much more challenging to select a site for collection, but they ended up going with the Nightingale site where the spacecraft did touch down in late 2020 and collected the sample.
NASA official: OREX has descended. Below the five meter mark, the hazard map is go for tag.
Dr. Nicole Lunning: From there, there's some gorgeous images of the sampler head called the TAGSAM, the touch and go sample acquisition mechanism. Just completely full of sample, so full that it actually had large parts of it. particles wedging open, a part of it called the mylar flap, and sample was just basically leaking or falling out of it.
So at that point there was a decision made pretty rapidly to stow it into the sample return capsule without doing additional maneuvers. So the sample return capsule landed at the Utah Test and Training Range.
There we actually had a portable clean room set up where the heat shield and back shell of that sample return capsule. So that's the outermost layer. The sample return capsule is kind of like a Matryoshka doll. And then inside of that, there's what's called the sample canister. And then further inside of that is the TAGSAM head that actually touched the surface of Bennu and collected the sample.
And so in that, temporary clean room. We hooked that canister up to a nitrogen flow purge. So at that point, we were keeping atmosphere out of the canister and brought it back to Johnson Space Center on a plane. So it was flown to Houston from Utah. And then we got that canister into our nitrogen glove box.
We actually designed a nitrogen glove box specifically that it would be big enough to take that canister lid off because it's quite large. And As we did that, we actually saw a fair amount of sample outside of the TAGSAM head. And so that was our first big surprise of like, Oh, we have all this sample, bigger sample than we expected to be outside of the TAGSAM head.
At least at this point, we got some of that sample out to the scientists pretty quickly and they started to work on it. And so that was really exciting.
As we went forward in our disassembly process, we did reach a step where some of the fasteners we needed to remove. We were pretty far into the number of fasteners we had to take off. We'd already taken off over 30 fasteners at this point without problems, but these ones were a little stubborn. They didn't want to come undone.
And so we started the process of troubleshooting and figuring out what the next steps were, but also we could see that sample resting on the mylar flap. And so then we collected that material. As we were collecting that, we could see into the canister and we were like, Oh, we could take sample out this way.
It wasn't the primary plan, but this is an option with, with the fasteners that are being a little stubborn and, and not coming undone. So we had a meeting, discussed it with a lot of different stakeholders, made sure everybody was okay with that plan. And then we started scooping sample out of the TAGSAM.
And at that point we scooped 70 grams of sample, what turned out to be more than half of the return sample, and enough that we knew that we had met the mission goal of 60 grams.
Dean: What's the total sample material collected as of now?
Dr. Nicole Lunning: So it's a little over 121 grams, which if you convert it into pounds is a little over a quarter pound.
So it may not sound like a lot, but it's the largest quantity of sample that human beings have brought back from any body other than the moon. So that's, that's really cool.
Dean: Out of all the asteroids, you know, why was Bennu chosen for this mission? What was there so special about this? Is it a typical asteroid or an atypical asteroid?
Dr. Nicole Lunning: It's atypical in a couple ways that made it a really great target for the mission. First of all, it's a near Earth asteroid, so even though it sounds like a long mission, it would have been a much, much longer decade scale to go all the way to the asteroid belt. So having Bennu be a near Earth asteroid means we didn't have to go as far.
Also, near Earth asteroids are of great interest to us as human beings because those are also the most likely to hit Earth. And Bennu does have a one in 1750 chance of hitting Earth before the year 2300. So it's, it's a low probability, but in the range of asteroids, it's high. So I don't want people to be super worried about it, but it is the kind of thing that we consider hazardous and that we want to understand better for that reason, as well as the understanding the formation of the solar system.
And that was the other feature that makes it really special is it had very low reflectance and its shape was most close to carbonaceous chondrite like meteorites. So the building blocks of life, which is so far with the preliminary results that have been presented, we are really seeing that.
NASA education resource: We don't know what ingredients were present during the formation of life on earth.
But primitive asteroids like Bennu serve as time capsules, preserving material from the dawn of the solar system. Spectrometers on OSIRIS REx confirm that Bennu is rich in carbon based molecules, including organics that are the stuff of life.
Dean: Do, do you have a fear of these potentially hazardous asteroids, you know, one colliding with the Earth?
Does that ever come into your mind?
Dr. Nicole Lunning: I mean, it, it is a scary thing to think about. It is low probability. So it's one of those, if you do sort of the fever charts or something, it's things that happen. Yeah. could be quite bad but have a very low probability of happening. And I will admit I am more caught up in like day to day stuff most of the time and it's not what I wake up at night worrying about, but it is something that we do want to be keeping our eye on, those near Earth asteroids.
And being cognizant of where they are when they're making close passes to Earth, which for Bennu, it's about every six years it does a close pass. And so being aware of them, I think is, is an important thing for the safety of humanity. Even though I don't want, I don't want people to be losing sleep over it.
Dean: It's always good for an asteroid scientist to be able to sleep well at night. So that makes me feel better too. So with the samples from Bennu, what do you hope to find from the samples?
Dr. Nicole Lunning: So one of the things we are really expecting and hoping to be able to understand better is all the things that in a meteorite might get changed by exposure to Earth's atmosphere, exposure to humidity, and oxygen.
That's where we do expect to really be able to see potentially different organic building blocks, different carbon compounds that could easily be oxidized, as well as other minerals that are very reactive to the Earth's atmosphere and in meteorites are not necessarily pristine. They're not exactly how they would be on an asteroid where these samples, we really have an opportunity to see that in a whole bunch of different ways.
And there's been several surprises already. We have already have some results of very high carbon content, which is exciting. Also the recognition of some phosphate minerals, which if you think of the enamel on your teeth is a bio phosphate. So phosphorus is an important element for life. And it wasn't one we really expected to find.
So that's been an exciting discovery. There's a lot more to learn still, but we are really excited about how much we potentially can learn about the building blocks of life in our solar system, Earth, and also these building blocks that could have also been delivered to other planets and moons.
Dean: So what's next for Osiris Rex?
It's still out there and going to a new target, sounds like.
Dr. Nicole Lunning: Yeah. Well, we're busy here working in the lab with the sample. It still has most of its instrument payload. It can't collect any more samples because it did return those things to Earth, but it's going to go onward to the asteroid Apophis. So the spacecraft will be able to explore a second asteroid as additional kind of bonus science we get out of the mission.
Dean: Well, this is an amazing mission and I know there's still more to come and still more discoveries. But Nicole, thanks so much for sharing with us today.
Dr. Nicole Lunning: Thanks for having me.
Dean: Okay, I swear this is the last time I'll mention the total solar eclipse of 2024. Oh, who am I kidding? I'll be talking about it for the rest of my life.
But anyway, let's pretend this will be the last time I ask you to remember it.
So, an old student of mine who's now an adult traveling the world as a nature photographer, he pointed me toward an essay written by Annie Dillard after seeing the total solar eclipse of 1979. And wow, I had never read anything so accurate, all that captured what it was like to witness a total solar eclipse.
I'm gonna read a couple excerpts from this essay and it's, it might be a little tough for me to [00:20:00] read them because I get emotional when I think about
eclipses, but here we go.
Dean (quoting Annie Dillard): I turned back to the sun.
It was going. The sun was going and the world was wrong. The grasses were wrong. They were platinum. Their every detail of stem, head, and blade shown lightless and artificially distinct as an art photographer's platinum print. This color has never been seen on earth. The hues were metallic.
Their finish was matte. From all the hills came screams. A piece of sky beside the crescent sun was detaching. It was a loosened circle of evening sky, suddenly lit from the back. It was an abrupt black body out of nowhere. It was a flat disc. It was almost over the sun. That's when there were screams. At once this disk of sky slid over the sun like a lid. The sky snapped over the sun like a lens cover. The hatch in the brain slammed.
Dean: Looking up with Dean Regas is a production of Cincinnati Public Radio. Kevin Reynolds and I created it. Ella Rowen is our show producer and editor and is already planning for the 2045 total solar eclipse. For Marshall Verbsky assists with audio production, editing, and really wants an asteroid named after him.
You'll get there, Marshall. It'll happen. It'll happen. Jenell Walton is our Vice President of Content. Ronnie Salerno is our Digital Platforms Manager. And Brittany Mayti is our Social Media Coordinator. Our theme song is Possible Light by Ziv Moran. And our cover art is by Nicole Chance. Keep looking up!
