MIT’s REXIS and Bennu’s watery surface
After flying in space for more than two years, NASA’s spacecraft OSIRIS-REx (Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification, Security-Regolith Explorer) recently entered into orbit around its target, the asteroid Bennu. Asteroids like Bennu are considered to be leftover debris from the formation of our solar system. So, in the first mission of its kind flown by NASA, OSIRIS-REx is looking to retrieve a sample and bring it to Earth. In addition to several instruments onboard the spacecraft is an MIT student-built one called the REgolith X-Ray Imaging Spectrometer (REXIS), which will provide data to help select the sampling site, as well as other mission objectives, including characterizing the asteroid and its behaviors, and comparing those to ground-based observations. REXIS is a joint project between the MIT Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences (EAPS), MIT Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AeroAstro), the Harvard College Observatory, the MIT Kavli Institute for Astrophysics and...