Houston, we have a podcast.

Welcome to the official podcast of the NASA Johnson Space Center, episode 285, Return of the OREX.

I'm Gary Jordan, and I'll be your host today.

On this podcast, we bring in the experts, scientists, engineers, and astronauts,

to let you know what's going on in the world of human spaceflight and more.

Asteroids are a fascinating presence in our solar system.

So much so, in fact, that NASA and other space agencies around the world

have been observing and exploring them for decades to unravel their mysteries.

We can learn quite a bit just from looking at them, but sometimes,

we have to take it a step further.

Take the Dart mission, for example, the double asteroid redirect test,

where we intentionally crashed a spacecraft onto an asteroid to measure its change

in orbit as a planetary defense test mission.

On its way back to Earth, as we speak, is a mission called OSIRIS-REX,

or Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification and Security,

Regolith Explorer.

This spacecraft launched in 2016 to rendezvous with an asteroid called Bennu in 2018.

Bennu is a particularly interesting asteroid.

I'm not a scientist here, but it has something to do with potentially unlocking the secrets of

origins of life in the universe as we know it, or something, I don't know.

Doesn't sound like that big of a deal, but there are a few scientists around the world that

think that this is a pretty important thing. Not only is Bennu itself pretty interesting,

...