Rendezvous With An Asteroid

A newly announced NASA mission to collect a sample of an asteroid and return it to Earth will include an instrument built at Arizona State University's School of Earth and Space Exploration (SESE). The ASU instrument will analyze long-wavelength infrared light emitted from the asteroid to map the minerals on its surface. The device is a modified version of the highly successful miniature infrared spectrometers carried on Spirit and Opportunity, NASA's twin Mars Exploration Rovers. The new asteroid sample-return mission is called OSIRIS-REx, an acronym standing for Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification, Security, and Regolith EXplorer. The Principal Investigator for the mission is Michael Drake of the University of Arizona in Tucson, and the mission is part of NASA's New Frontiers program.

The mission's goals are to return a sample of rocks, soil, and dust from a pristine carbonaceous asteroid, map the asteroid's global properties down to submillimeter scales, characterize this class of asteroid for comparison with meteorites, and measure a subtle effect of sunlight that can alter the orbits of asteroids.

"The OSIRIS-REx mission is an important milestone for planetary science in the state of Arizona," says Kip Hodges, director of ASU's School of Earth and Space Exploration. "I am very excited at the prospects of building closer research collaborations with our friends and colleagues at the University of Arizona."

The instrument to be built at ASU is the OSIRIS-REx Thermal Emission Spectrometer, or OTES for short. It will be the first complex electro-optical instrument for spaceflight to be built at ASU.

A first for ASU

"In the past, each of the five instruments we've built for NASA were built at an aerospace company in California," says Philip Christensen, Instrument Scientist for OTES. He is Regents' Professor of Geological Sciences in the School of Earth and Space Exploration, part of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences. "For the first time, a piece of complicated space hardware will be built on the ASU campus."

Christensen adds, "This is something we've been working toward for 15 years. It's is a major step forward for ASU — I can count on one hand the number of universities that can do this."

Greg Mehall is Project Engineer for OTES at ASU and has overseen the technical development of several previous ASU flight instruments. "We've worked hard over the past few years to create the infrastructure at ASU necessary to support such an endeavor," he says. "We recently developed two prototype flight instruments based on the Mars rover infrared spectrometers. They're representative prototypes for OTES."

The instrument also fits into a bigger picture at ASU. Hodges explains, "OTES demonstrates that SESE is now ready not just to operate instruments in space from the ASU campus, but to fabricate space-ready hardware in-house." In many ways, he says, "OTES is proof of the promise of SESE, an academic unit designed to integrate science and engineering research and education. We are very fortunate to work at a university that supports such a groundbreaking enterprise."

OTES will be built in cleanroom facilities in the new Interdisciplinary Science and Technology Building (ISTB) 4, currently being constructed on the Tempe campus. "ISTB-4 is a remarkable building that will not only support advanced research by SESE and other academic and research units, but will also serve as a public showcase for scientific exploration," Hodges notes. "The OTES fabrication facility will be on the first floor of ISTB-4, in space designed for public viewing through high-bay windows. It will be fantastic to be able to use this state-of-the-art laboratory as a teaching tool."