A astronomy cast, episode 544, Weird Issues, biosignatures.

Welcome to Astronomy Castor, weekly fact-based journey through the Cosmos where we help you

understand all we know, but how we know what we know.

I'm Frieza Cain, publisher of Universe Today with me as always, Dr. Pamela Gay, a Senior

Scientist for the Planetary Science Institute and the Director of CosmoQuest.

Hey Pam, how you doing?

I'm doing well.

How are you doing, Fraser?

Good.

Are there any updates on Bennu mapping?

Well, we're in phase two mapping right now, which means that all of the wonderful 6,000

somewhat people that have come to our site succeeded in mapping out the majority of the

surface of Bennu.

And we now have a specially-select group of eight who each marked over 1,000 images during

the initial mapping phase.

And that group of eight is doing a detailed measurement of the four potential sample sites.

And their data is going into the pool to help figure out exactly where Bennu is going

to, well, grab some stuff to bring back to Earth.

That's awesome.

Please let us know when the final decision has been made.

We will.

Once again, another place where the universe is going to make this difficult for us.

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