A small, dark pebble carried back to Earth by the University of Arizona-led OSIRIS-REx asteroid sampling mission is about to go on display in Tucson.
The priceless nugget from the asteroid Bennu is joining the permanent collection at the U of A’s Alfie Norville Gem & Mineral Museum downtown.
It will be unveiled at 4:30 p.m. Wednesday during a ticketed event featuring OSIRIS-REx principal investigator and U of A Regents Professor Dante Lauretta.
The museum inside the historic Pima County Courthouse at 115 N. Church Ave. is one of only three places in the world to receive Bennu samples from NASA for public display. The other two are the Johnson Space Center in Houston and the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History in Washington, D.C.
After a 7-year journey covering more than 4 billion miles, the robotic spacecraft sent a capsule back to Earth on Sept. 24, filled with 121.6 grams of pristine rocks and dust left over from the formation of the solar system about 4.5 billion years ago.
The entire sample wouldn’t fill an 8-ounce coffee cup, but it represents the largest amount of material by far ever brought back from an asteroid.
Researchers at the U of A are already hard at work studying the sand-sized grains they have received from NASA so far — roughly 200 milligrams worth, or less than half the weight of a single Tic Tac.
The Gem & Mineral Museum’s asteroid pebble is huge by comparison, with well-defined structure and texture. It will go on display next to a moon rock brought to Earth by astronauts during the Apollo program.
All material from the OSIRIS-REx mission has now been collected.
