{"id":7210,"date":"2016-01-08T08:43:38","date_gmt":"2016-01-08T08:43:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/revoscience.com\/en\/?p=7210"},"modified":"2016-01-09T05:53:26","modified_gmt":"2016-01-09T05:53:26","slug":"student-built-experiment-integrated-onto-nasas-osiris-rex-mission","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/student-built-experiment-integrated-onto-nasas-osiris-rex-mission\/","title":{"rendered":"Student-Built Experiment Integrated onto NASA\u2019s OSIRIS-REx Mission"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"MIT<\/a>
MIT graduate students Pronoy Biswas (left) and Mark Chodas prepare the Regolith X-Ray Imaging Spectrometer (REXIS) instrument for flight.
Credits: William Litant\/MIT<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

A student-built experiment aboard NASA\u2019s Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification, Security-Regolith Explorer (OSIRIS-REx) mission has been integrated onto the spacecraft.<\/span><\/p>\n

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The Regolith X-ray Imaging Spectrometer (REXIS) will determine elemental abundances on the surface of asteroid Bennu, complementing the mineral and chemical mapping capabilities provided by two other instruments on the spacecraft.<\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

“The students worked incredibly hard to get to this point,\u201d said Mike Donnelly, OSIRIS-REx project manager at NASA\u2019s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. \u201cIt is quite an accomplishment to develop a flight instrument and have it integrated to a spacecraft that’s headed to an asteroid.”<\/span><\/p>\n

REXIS will observe the solar X-rays and their interaction with the asteroid\u2019s surface material, or regolith. The surface responds to this incoming energy by glowing faintly, or fluorescing, by emitting X-rays. These X-rays have an energy that is uniquely characteristic of the elements. REXIS is a telescope that images this X-ray fluorescence, allowing the production of maps of the different elements present on Bennu’s surface.<\/span><\/p>\n

REXIS brings together students and faculty from Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and Harvard University, both in Cambridge. After a competitive process REXIS was selected as a student collaboration experiment as part of OSIRIS-REx.<\/span><\/p>\n

[pullquote]Scientists expect that Bennu may hold clues to the origin of the solar system and the source of the water and organic molecules that may have made their way to Earth.[\/pullquote]<\/p>\n

The instrument will involve more than 100 students throughout the mission. Students at Harvard and MIT will perform data analysis as part of their coursework.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThe REXIS instrument has already achieved its primary objective \u2013 to train the next generation of scientists and engineers,\u201d said Dante Lauretta, principal investigator for OSIRIS-REx at the University of Arizona, Tucson. \u201cThis team should be proud of all they have accomplished. I look forward to seeing the REXIS data from Bennu and using it to learn more about the chemistry of the asteroid surface.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

OSIRIS-REx will be the first U.S. mission to sample an asteroid. After launch in September 2016, the OSIRIS-REx spacecraft will travel to the near-Earth asteroid Bennu and retrieve at least 60 grams (2.1 ounces) of surface material and return it to Earth for study. Scientists expect that Bennu may hold clues to the origin of the solar system and the source of the water and organic molecules that may have made their way to Earth. OSIRIS-REx\u2019s investigation will also inform future efforts to develop a mission to mitigate an asteroid impact on Earth, should one be required.<\/span><\/p>\n

NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, provides overall mission management, systems engineering and safety and mission assurance for OSIRIS-REx.\u00a0 Dante Lauretta is the mission’s principal investigator at the University of Arizona. Lockheed Martin Space Systems in Denver is building the spacecraft. OSIRIS-REx is the third mission in NASA’s New Frontiers Program. NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, manages New Frontiers for the agency’s Science Mission Directorate in Washington.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A student-built experiment aboard NASA\u2019s Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification, Security-Regolith Explorer (OSIRIS-REx) mission has been integrated onto the spacecraft.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":7211,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14,20],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7210","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-innovation","category-space-news"],"featured_image_urls":{"full":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/01\/rexis_students.jpg",320,208,false],"thumbnail":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/01\/rexis_students-150x150.jpg",150,150,true],"medium":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/01\/rexis_students-300x195.jpg",300,195,true],"medium_large":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/01\/rexis_students.jpg",320,208,false],"large":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/01\/rexis_students.jpg",320,208,false],"1536x1536":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/01\/rexis_students.jpg",320,208,false],"2048x2048":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/01\/rexis_students.jpg",320,208,false],"ultp_layout_landscape_large":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/01\/rexis_students.jpg",320,208,false],"ultp_layout_landscape":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/01\/rexis_students.jpg",320,208,false],"ultp_layout_portrait":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/01\/rexis_students.jpg",320,208,false],"ultp_layout_square":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/01\/rexis_students.jpg",320,208,false],"newspaper-x-single-post":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/01\/rexis_students.jpg",320,208,false],"newspaper-x-recent-post-big":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/01\/rexis_students.jpg",320,208,false],"newspaper-x-recent-post-list-image":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/01\/rexis_students.jpg",95,62,false],"web-stories-poster-portrait":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/01\/rexis_students.jpg",320,208,false],"web-stories-publisher-logo":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/01\/rexis_students.jpg",96,62,false],"web-stories-thumbnail":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/01\/rexis_students.jpg",150,98,false]},"author_info":{"info":["Amrita Tuladhar"]},"category_info":"Innovation<\/a> Space\/ AstroPhysics<\/a>","tag_info":"Space\/ AstroPhysics","comment_count":"0","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7210","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7210"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7210\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7211"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7210"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7210"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7210"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}