La microscopie au service de la mission OSIRIS-REx

A few months ago, the OSIRIS-REx space mission brought samples of the asteroid Bennu back to Earth. The first studies have just been published in Nature and Nature Astronomy. They show that this primitive body, dating from the earliest days of our solar system, possesses a complex chemistry with molecules that are later found in the living world.

Pierre-Marie Zanetta, now post-doc at the LGL-TPE in Saint-Etienne, studied these samples using electron microscopy. He is co-author of one of these published papers. Well done to him!

To present these results, the Lyon Observatory has produced a short video, available online on the UCBL YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y2YMjAtw_NY
You will recognize the NEO-ARM in the video!

(Image: NASA/Goddard/University of Arizona)