[slate]
So this is a mission
that really is a time capsule view of
the origin of our solar system and even the materials that made Earth such a special
place where we live, where we came to be. And so by going to
these primitive objects, the most countable infinite we have in our
in our solar system. We get the left over debris of that first period of formation
when the planets came forth. When atmospheres and climates formed
And when the stuff flying around was available to reach these objects
like Earth, like Mars, like even Europa and
this mission goes to touch, taste, feel, explore
and understand those kinds of objects. And OSIRIS-REx is
three missions in one to make that kind of exploration cost-effectively
for not much more than the price of a blockbuster movie. [slate]
This mission will tell us about how the blocking blocks
of chemistry got to early Earth and
or any planet for that matter, and may have generated the
catalyzed the chemistry that led to the formation of life or pre-life.
And those are huge questions. They're all about where did we come
Where does life spring forth on these early planets
that were probably extremely baron and challenging. And so this mission
will go to the place where that stuff came from and bring it back to Earth
to studied for generations of women and men in laboratories.
[slate]
Yes early in the solar system in the maelstrom
of stuff that formed our planet and others, the leftover
debris was in a collisional mode with these worlds. These small
asteroids like Bennu were colliding with Earth delivering materials.
Those materials included what we think were organic chemicals.
The kind, of seed corn, if you will, the Lego building blocks
of the chemicals that became eventually what we think was the onset of life.
And that early time was lost in the Earth record.
We have to go elsewhere to find it because our planet is so dynamic, so exciting.
And that's what this mission is all about.
[slate]
This mission is almost unimaginably magical
to folks like me, all of us who have been exploring the solar system
for so long across generations. Because all in one it
is an asteroid reconnaissance mission at the scale where we'll see things
an inch scale - the scale of insects. Not that there are any on these asteroids.
For this object. We'll look at it in three dimensions. We'll do what is
equivalent of medical imaging inside it with our ability to map its surface.
And then we'll touch, taste and return materials.
These primitive materials. All of that in one mission for the price of a
major motion picture. This is exploration at its best
and in a very American way. And we even have partners of course from Canada
and Japan on this mission. So it's dazzling to people like me.
[slate]
This is a mission about the origin of the solar system.
Many, many billion years before that the
current gestation of our universe was formed in what is often called a
big bang. To some nobelist it's actually a series of big firecrackers. But in any
event that was 10 billion years before this time. So Bennu
is a time capsule for our solar system. But our
universe is bigger. And that's what makes this special. We can look at our own neighborhood
first through this kind of mission to explore Bennu and like
similar objects and then project them back in time to other histories
of other solar systems that we're now starting to understand as we explore
exoplanets with our grand telescopes.
[slate] So an asteroid is an object, a small inert object that flies
in space in orbit around the sun and they often
collide or can collide with planets. And they're small objects
you know a few miles across or smaller. Comets are
volatile-baring sort of asteroid-like objects that are
full of gas and dust that erupts as they approach the sun in their long orbit
and produce tails as they get closer to the sun. Meteors
and meteorites are things that fall into the Earth. They could be from comets or asteroids.
The ones that land on the Earth are meteorites.