Student-built instrument headed to asteroid and back
Who can say they’ve been to an asteroid and back? In 2023, more than 50 MIT students may claim this feat, at least through the activities of a small, shoebox-sized instrument named REXIS (Regolith X-ray Imaging Spectrometer). The instrument, which was designed and built by students from MIT and Harvard University, will be one of five instruments flying aboard NASA’s OSIRIS-REx (Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification, Security-Regolith Explorer), the first U.S. mission to retrieve and return an asteroid sample to Earth. This week, NASA announced that REXIS was successfully integrated onboard the spacecraft, bringing the mission one step closer to its scheduled launch next September. Once in orbit, OSIRIS-REx will set course for Bennu, a small, near-Earth asteroid that may harbor material from the early solar system. The spacecraft is expected to reach Bennu sometime in 2018, when it will survey the space rock for the next year and take...