I'm John Datchel with Dante Loretta.

The professor is the author of a new book, The Asteroid Hunter, a scientist journey to the dawn of our solar system.

It's autobiographical. It's extremely helpful to understand the steps that NASA requires for a successful mission. Even a mission that is only

partially successful has to go through all these steps. Two rejections. And now Mike Drake in the lead,

and it's important to say Mike's job was management. There's science, there's engineering,

there's cost, there's management. And Mike is a terrific manager and leaves Dante at the time for the science and to put together the science team.

You put together after that December 2007 gut punch, I guess this is a shot to the head.

You put together yet another program going forward, and you've come up with a wonderful

name.

How did you do that?

When Mike brought me on, that was the direction that he gave me.

He said, Dante Goh define the scientific objectives for an asteroid sample return mission.

So I went home that night, and I started thinking about the different communities that are

interested in asteroids.

And I started with the group that I'm most familiar with, the cosmochemists and the astrobiologists

that are looking for signs of the seeds of life.

How did Earth become a habitable world? How did the organic molecules that make up all the biological organisms on our planet? How did they get here? Because our models of planetary formation suggests the Earth was very hot and very dry when it formed. And those compounds were probably delivered later from objects that formed in the outer solar system where

ices are stable and organic molecules are stable.

So that was our origins and the O for Osiris, Rex.

And then I thought about the astronomers.

There's a large community that they spend their time on mountaintops, not so much anymore

because it's gone to remote operations, and I think they kind of miss it.

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