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[Music]

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NASA is sending the OSIRIS-REx
spacecraft to explore near-Earth
asteroid Bennu.

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To carry out its mission,
OSIRIS-REx is equipped with a

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suite of remote sensing
instruments,

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including a spectrometer
called OVIRS.

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OSIRIS-REx is a mission to bring
a sample back from an asteroid.

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That's not something that we've
done before and that's
very exciting.

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The idea behind OSIRIS-REx is to
go to a pristine building block

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of the solar system to try to
find out more about how they

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formed, and to bring a
sample back here to Earth.

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OSIRIS-REx's primary
science goal is to grab a sample

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of asteroid Bennu and return
it to Earth for analysis.

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Planetary scientists are
interested in asteroids
because they're

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chemistry sets representing the
formation of the solar system.

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We can't learn that on Earth,
because the Earth has erosion

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and other processes that have
changed its pristine condition.

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Asteroid Bennu is interesting
because it's one of the blackest

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objects in the solar system,
so we think it's covered with

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carbon material, organics,
the building blocks of life.

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To search for organics on Bennu,
a team at NASA's Goddard Space
Flight Center

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built the OSIRIS-REx Visible and
Infrared Spectrometer, or OVIRS.

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OVIRS is a spectrometer, and
what that means is it breaks

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down light into a lot of little
individual wavelength packets.

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When you look at very fine
detail from spectra, you can

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tell what the material is that
you're looking at, and that's

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what we're excited about – the
idea of going out and looking at

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something and saying, "Oh, I
know what that's made of, and

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that would be a good
place to take a sample."

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Before arriving at asteroid
Bennu, OVIRS will have to

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survive two years in the
unforgiving conditions of space.

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Fixing a broken part after
launch is not an option,

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so OVIRS has a
uniquely durable design.

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OVIRS is a very simple
instrument: it has two mirrors
and no moving parts.

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And the reason we like that
kind of design is because moving

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parts are one of the things we
worry about breaking in space,

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and once it breaks
your instrument is lost.

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The instrument has to operate
in a very harsh environment,

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there's no air in space, there's
a high vacuum, things can
heat up.

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Well if you can eliminate moving
parts, that's just one more risk

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that you don't
have to worry about.

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I don't have to worry about, "Oh
is that shutter open or closed?"

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or "Is that motor moving?"

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So we very specifically tried to
get rid of things that can fail,

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and fail in a bad way.

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Designing instruments to survive
in space is critical,

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but just getting there can
be a bumpy ride.

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Rockets shake their payloads
during launch, so instruments
like OVIRS

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must pass a vibration test
to prove that they are
launch-worthy.

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It is the test that I
hate the most in the world.

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You've spent five years making
this nice little beautiful thing

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and you hand it to somebody
and say, "Try to break it."

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So one of the things we do in
vibration testing is we'll shake

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it as hard as we think it's
going to see, plus a little
bit more,

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in every possible
direction just to make sure

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nothing is going to
break off during launch.

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On OVIRS we actually had a case
where the glue came a bit apart

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during thermal testing, and then
when we put it on the
vibration chamber

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a full assembly gave way
and there was a big pulse on
the instrument.

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We had to stop and go back and
make sure that everything
was fine,

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which it was, and we also
had to redesign things a
little bit.

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And that shows you the value of
testing – had that been on the

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launch chamber, we wouldn't have
been able to do anything
about it.

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OSIRIS-REx is a cutting-edge
mission to explore

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asteroid Bennu and the origins
of our solar system,

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and OVIRS is critical to the
mission's success.

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OSIRIS-REx is just such an
interesting mission,

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the concept of going to one of
these really primitive bodies

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and bringing back a sample that
we can then study here in
the Earth,

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is pretty spectacular
when you think about it.

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From the OVIRS instrument
itself, I'm actually quite

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excited to see if we can see
organics on the surface and what

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interesting minerals we actually
do find, because we won't know
that until we get there.

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We've got a very good instrument
compliment on top of a mission
that's taking a sample.

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So we can tell what we're taking
samples of, we understand the

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context of the sample that's
returned, and the sample when it

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comes back will be analyzed by
people all over the world for
the next forty years.

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So it's just this very
nice complete package.

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[Satellite beeping]