Exploring Near Earth Asteroids in the Infrared, supporting NASA's OSIRIS-REx sample return mission.

The need to better understand the building blocks of our solar system has become a global mission as NASA, ESA, and JAXA have missions designed to characterise and in some cases sample primitive bodies. NASA's Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification, and Security - Regolith Explorer (OSIRIS-REx) mission will be one of the first missions to a primitive asteroid in the solar system (1999 RQ36 also known as Bennu) and return with a pristine sample from its surface [e.g. Lauretta et al., 2012]. OSIRIS-REx was successfully launched in September 2016 and is due to arrive in mid 2018, during the time period of this project. Sample materials from Bennu's surface will provide significant insights into the formation, survivability and nature of organic materials in our solar system, which could have formed life on Earth, as well as the physical nature and composition of such primitive bodies.

Orbital measurements of Bennu will be the first to characterize a primitive body in such detail to understand the morphology, thermophysical and photometric nature of the surface as well as its chemistry and mineralogy. Accurate determination of these parameters are essential to understanding the orbital evolution of Near Earth Asteroids and their potential as hazardous objects.

This project will fill a major laboratory need in our reference laboratory spectra and help with analysis of data as it is returned by the OSIRIS-REx mission as it arrives a Bennu in 2018. By making links to remote sensing data the proposed laboratory work will allow sample measurements of individual objects to be placed in their wider context of solar system evolution.