Presenting DUST OF OSIRIS, watercolor and ink, 12x12”. Inspired by the Egyptian decorative motifs, the Egyptian Revival movement, and a high-res photo of the opened OSIRIS-REx sample container, containing dust from asteroid Bennu. This has been a labor of love for me, I hope you enjoy it!
Nearly done with the ink/gold portion of the #osirisrex#wip. Next up, decorative precious stone inlay (in paint, both figuratively and LITERALLY thanks to my Daniel Smith PrimaTek #watercolors), a golden center, and finally, asteroid samples!
Holy crap, that's a HUGE surprise and opens the possibility that signs of life could also be found!
"Asteroid Bennu may be a fragment of an ancient ocean world. That's still highly speculative. But it's the best lead I have right now to explain the origin of that material," principal investigator for OSIRIS-REx, Dante Lauretta of University of Arizona said.
Les voilà ! Les fameux grains collectés par la sonde OSIRIS-REx 🇺🇲 dont l'accès dans la capsule était rendu complexe par des vis récalcitrantes.
Le plus gros grain fait 1 cm. Notez la diversité de morphologie, de texture et de brillance. De la science à venir ! 🔬
Excited to (finally!) announce that my artwork FAREWELL TO BENNU is on the back cover of The Planetary Society’s December 2023 issue of THE PLANETARY REPORT!
When the OSIRIS-REx sample return capsule landed successfully on Sep 24, NASA had reported that the parachute system did not deploy properly. NASA offered an explanation today that the sequence of operations to deploy and to cut free the drogue parachute were executed in reverse order!
The diagram below describes what transpired.
Root cause: Incorrect wiring due to mislabeling in schematic.
TONIGHT (11/28) at 12:30 UTC/21:30 JST it'll be the LAST AND GREATEST public seminar on sample return missions.
And... I will be chairing 🪑, asking BLISTERING QUESTIONS to our panel, who include NASA & JAXA people working on the curation of grains from Apollo, #OSIRISREx, #Hayabusa2 and the upcoming #MMX mission, and the Smithsonian Museum who grabbed a grain from asteroid Bennu to display.
A piece of asteroid Bennu, brought back by the NASA OSIRIS-REx mission, went on display today at the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History in Washington, D.C.
Chief guests at the unveiling event:
NASA Administrator Bill Nelson
National Museum of Natural History curator of meteorites Tim McCoy
Smithsonian Under Secretary for Science and Research Ellen Stofan
Osiris-Rex: Probenbehälter lässt sich mit verfügbarem Werkzeug nicht öffnen
Auch wenn das Forschungsteam bisher nicht an den Inhalt des Probenbehälters kommt, wurde mehr Material sichergestellt, als die Sonde mindestens sammeln sollte.
Last week, Brian May had a guest blog post on the OSIRIS-REx mission page, talking about the sample the team found sitting on top of the sample collection cannister (even before they opened it).
It included a stereo anaglyph, but since I can never get those to work for me, I used GIMP to turn them into a red-blue anaglyph, so I could use my 3d glasses. Check it out!
A reminder that today at 11:00 a.m. EDT (Wed Oct 11), the sample from asteroid Bennu, brought to earth by the OSIRIS-REx spacecraft, will be unveiled to the public.
There will be a NASA media briefing at 2:30 pm EDT.
O what secrets will these rocks from the time of the birth of the solar system reveal to us? Any guesses?
These are some electron microscope images of the rock samples from asteroid Bennu, that exhibit different types of minerals such as water-bearing clay, sulphides and iron oxide.
In addition to the 70.3 grams of #Bennu ☄️ already catalogued, an estimated 30–70 grams of material still lie inside the heart of #OSIRISREx’s sample-return canister. The screwdrivers 🔩 that #NASA is building to free the remaining rocks and dust will need to be made from materials that won’t contaminate the samples, which are currently inside a nitrogen-filled glovebox. It could be weeks ⏳ before technicians can unfasten the stuck screws. https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-023-03978-4