This is a

This is CBS I on the world with John Bachelor.

Here's John Bachelor.

I welcome Professor Dante Loretta University of Arizona, most importantly the author of a new book

The Asteroid Hunter, a scientist journey to the dawn of our solar system.

Professor, congratulations, this is wonderful, but we get in a time machine and go to February of 2004.

A clear day in Arizona. You are an assistant professor at the time looking

forward to tenure and your good friend and boss Mike Drake calls you on your mobile phone and says,

come on over here to the Arizona Inn and meet Steve Price from Lockheed.

That day begins a journey that we're just now illustrating in your new book. So what, who

was Steve Price? Who was Mike Craig and what did you learn that day. Good evening to you.

Thank you John I'm thrilled to be here. Mike Drake was the director of the Lüger

and Planetary Laboratory at the University of Arizona and he was the one who hired me at that point about three years ago onto the faculty here

LPL was founded by Gerard Kuiper famous planetary scientist really founded the field and was heavily involved in the

surveyor and Apollo programs at the dawn of the American space age and the lunar

planetary laboratory has been a training ground for young planetary scientists throughout that time.

So Mike and I were both Cosmo Chemists, that is chemists who study material from outer space,

lunar samples, meteorites, comet dust, and we had bonded quite

a bit over those three years because of our shared scientific interest and our personalities

just really clicked.

And he had taken me under his wing and he was my mentor and my dear friend.

And Steve Price was from Lockheed Martin and he was the director of business development and recently had worked with

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