Transcripts For CSPAN3 Smithsonian 20240705 : vimarsana.com

The increase and diffusion of knowledge. And today nasa has enabled us to have the public share in this amazing example of innovation, explanation, discovering insights. This bennu samples will help nasa and the smithsonian inspired the next generations of scientists. And now the inspiring leader of nasa, administrator bill nelson. You all may not know that ellen is the former chief scientist of nasa, and a subsequently has its ups really worked up to this august position. You may also may not know that there is an incredible syncopation between the Natural History museum and nasa. Because what is of this museum about . Its about the history of the earth. Well, that is one of the Scientific Research objectives that we have to understand earth. All of our satellites that are no examining everything thats happening, the new Great Observatories ever going to put up that when combined with the 25 satellites up there now will give us a 3d composite of exactly what is happening to the earth and its atmosphere, its a land, its water, and its ice. And so its quite natural then that the Natural History museum would partner with nasa on the big hyper wall where we are now bringing data realtime what is happening to the earth as a result of the measurements that are coming from our satellites. Its also quite natural that this museum would want a sample from the cosmos. Now, asteroids are something that we are very interested in. You know about a year ago we went out and crashed the spacecraft into an asteroid to see if we could move it. And that 14,000 miles an hour it hit the bullseye, and then with our telescopes we saw that we did move it in case we had a killer asteroid coming. We now know we could hit it and move its trajectory. But we also want to know whats being these asteroids. Because they fly through the solar system, and i suspect fly through other Solar Systems far out there in the universe where they are where there may very well be other Solar Systems just like ours. So why asteroids . As ellen said, this asteroid now we know has water crystals and carbon. Caller , two of tt ultimately cause like. So as of these things are whizzing through space and enough for an half, 5 billion years of evolution of this solar system, of the 13. 8 billion years of evolution of the universe and its billions of galaxies each having billions of stars, these things run into each other. That gas clouds form and they form and they spit out stars, and then all of this is colliding with each other and exploding. And ultimately, we had a remnant of that that is giving us a clue to the development of our own solar system and indeed the development of wipers and why was it of why earth and why was it life developed here. It is all part of our quest to understand, to try to understand who we are, what we are, where we are in the vastness of this cosmos. Who do i turn it over to . Okay. Thank you. The sample we are going to unfiltered is that the only sample in our building. We have are the grains rum bennu that will serve as a foundation for the museums, our unique Planet Initiative you i know please the curator of meteorites, tim mccoy who is a member of the. Translator along with our colleague carry was also here. Tim will discuss what we hope to learn from bennu. Good morning. I am beyond excited to welcome you to National Museum of Natural History. For a moment that i started dreaming of 20 years ago the idea that we would collect a sample of an asteroid kind a sample of an asteroid returned by spacecraft would join us here in the gallery of meteorites that you are standing in. But what we doing today is really just a milestone. Its a start in where we wee going. And where were going to try and use sample to really understand our unique planet. Our planet has features of havent found any other plan plant in the solar system, or outside the solar system. We have continents. We have oceans. We have life. The meteorite, the asteroid example we see today is the starting point cut its the Building Block of all that. Administer nelson said that brought water to our planned cut it brought carbon toward planet. It brought organic molecules. And our goal is to decipher how those things came to form the planet we live on today here we do that with a group of scientists here in a museum and a group of collaborators across the country and around the world, including the talented scientist at the osirisrex teen and our colleagues at nasa. And so again i am beyond thrilled, this is something ive dreamed of for 20 years, and today it comes to reality. But its really just the first step. So im going to invite the press if you want to relocate cameras, we will have the unveiling of the exhibit here in just a moment. Thank you. Are we ready . Awesome. Four, three, two, one. So our case contains a model of the Atlas V Rocket that launched the spacecraft in 2016. You can see a model of the spacecraft at the top. This is a model of the actual spacecraft built by lockheed martin, and the arm that reached down and touched the surface for about five seconds. The most important part of this got in the center in the stimulus steel container that prevents the atlas or from reaching sample, we had our sample of asteroid bennu. So here we have as a says a view from the beginning business is really where it all started. This is where the feedstock of life, of motion, of everything you know came from a rock like this and were so happy to unveil this to the American Public and share our journey with them. [applause] questions . Any questions from you all . Get up here. Well, i will just point out you know what the mechanism was, the spacecraft snuck up to the asteroid, and then the arm comes out and it had an explosion of gas that shot into the surface. We didnt know what the surface was going to be like, and as it turned out there was a lot of loose material. And the amount that we thought were going to get, we have many times more well, like a catchers mitt, shooting the gas and then the material shot back up in to that, and that was then contained in a big canister that is about this wide. That canister is down at the Johnson Space center, in a special facility to curate. Heres what happened interesting. They had Something Like 38 bolts on top of the canister. Two of the bolts are having difficulty getting off, so they havent gotten into most of the material is inside the canister. But there was so much material that shot up into that catchers mitt, that we have as much as we expected in the first place that was on the top of the canister when it was all contained. And part of that is what you are seeing here. And they are still trying to figure out how to get those two and bolts undone and not compromise the big sample that is in the container. I think thats a really important part is not compromising the sample. Because this is a sample 75 of this would be curated by nasa into the future. So your grandchildren can come up with a question we cant even imagine now with a technique we havent even thought of inventing. This material will be available from nasa from our colleagues at Johnson Space center in a pristine estate for them to answer questions. This is literally the gift that keeps on giving. Decades of scientists will be able to understand the history of our planned, the history of our solar system from these samples here and this is all available because of the American Public and available here for exhibit to the American Public and the scientists throughout the world. Administer nelson, you mentioned the Asteroid Mission to die morpheus dark mission. Theres a mission on its way for middle after the submission on its way to another set of asteroids. Lucy. So why asteroids . Why now . What has happened to generate this interest in asteroids, not just from the United States but from other countries around the world . Well, lucy was launched years ago. Psyche has been in the planning and the Just Launched a month ago, and is going to an asteroid datacenter between mars and jupiter. Lucy thats on its way from years ago is going to an Asteroid Belt that one of the group of asteroids that its probably thousands if not millions precedes jupiter in its orbit, at another group is right behind jupiter in its orbit. And lucy is going to look at those and is going to determine what they are made of. The other is going specifically to a metallic asteroid were as this one was a stony asteroid. At all of these are giving as clues. The question is why is this asteroid is all happening up at his been in the works for years and years because these are the clues as to how we develop and ultimately as tim said, how we develop life here on this planet. Thank you. How did you choose that particular sample from osirisrex to put on display out of the dozens . Its a really good question. So we had an agreement of how much material we should make available for the American Public, and so three samples will ultimately be going on exhibit one here, where the first, when you space center, houston just outside of Johnson Space center. One of your version of arizona gem and Mineral Museum where the pi is at university of arizona. So its really a matter of finding a stone that we thought was typical of the kind of material, and we needed something that was terrible. We put this in here. It has transport across the country. We want something that is photogenic of something that is relatively flat pics of the winter through five or six or seven stones within this, all within the size range and it is sort of the goldilocks affects. This one was allowed to become a little too small, they found when just right and thats what you did to share with the American Public. [inaudible question] yes. Yes. We actually have a cat scan of this rock that was done in Johnson Space center and we can make that available if you would like. So its a rotational view and then you can actually see the inside of this rock in exquisite detail. Six microns across, only six 1000s of the millimeter is a skill we know the interior structure of this rock. So we wanted to be sure we documented this as thoroughly as possible to make sure we know what the American Public is getting to see. Can you tell us about bennu . Tranten is one of the many near earth asteroids. They are thought to be shortlived, and unstable orbits. So bennu ssi can a or Third Generation asteroid. The original asteroid, the protoasteroid with an Asteroid Belt broke apart through impact and then small asteroid the ship we call the rubble. Think of like a group of marbles stuck together in space. Some of those are unstable orbit and coming to a person crossing orbits. They dont stay there very long, maybe tens of millions of years. We are getting sort of a snapshot of things passing through the inner solar system right now, and bennu is a perfect target because energetically we could get there and we could get back with the sample, and from light reflected from the sun that we could see on earth we could tell that it was rich in carbon which is one of our goals. The Building Blocks of life on our planet, on our unique planet. So it was a perfect target and the mission just worked flawlessly. There were so many things, so many challenges and yet this group of scientists and engineers, and really thousands of individual who worked on this over the course of a decade to make this come to reality. You say you other grains at the museum. [inaudible question] i a coinvestigator and so i am doing mineralogy, basically the textures of the rock and the kinds of minerals that are in it. That gives as clues to how it formed. A certain mineral might tell us about water. Another mineral might tell us about what the early solar system was like before. Water actually flows through these asteroids and change them and want to understand the change. So the next two years the science team will be taking the samples and really trying to intensively understand, not just a history of this asteroid, but the history of water in our solar system and how that water and is organic molecules, the things before life, actually came to our planet and informed oceans and life on our planet, and potentially on other planets in the solar system. I think thats a great point. People of remember these Building Blocks have been delivered all over. Thats why nasa for such an expensive program of looking for life on earth here. [inaudible question] can you talk about the timeline for when people made public at the hands on samples and what sort of evaluation criteria you have for giving to the . So we had a years long planning exercise with the samples that are part of the team. So weve only come up with a simple analysis plan the says how these pictures will be allocated, whos doing what, how where cooperative. We have working group to come together and so the team is exceptionally well organized over years to make this happen. But then the would be a call for other samples to the general scientific public, the people who were not originally involved in the mission. Six months out the would be a catalog release and people can say i want to study the sample for this reason to put in a request. Those will be reviewed because nasa, like all good organization, as the review process to decide what the best side, the best use of bitter, whats the best use of the funding and then those would be available to the general scientific community. We are trying to be very open and transparent about this. Trying to make sure everyone knows what we are learning. This is not a Secretive Club and we really try to make sure that the entire International Scientific Community Benefits from this work. Are the general classifications for the samples . Are the like five categories separating . We dont know yet. So what we do know is theres big stuff and little stuff, right . And thats important because theres only a few of the largest rocks. You want to be careful, the slots of the dust size stuff but thats what the team is doing right now is time to figure out how many different types the material in there and what do each of those types of material tell us. We see different types of material, remember we studied asteroid for two years in orbit. This is a First Mission is both an intensive Orbital Mission of an asteroid and a sample return mission. The first time the u. S. Has done that, this is a first that we have returned a sample from the service of another planetary body in 50 years. The u. S. Has done it since 1972 with apollo 17. So, so using an accomplishment by nasa that hasnt been done since apollo 17. And thats a remarkable thing so were being very careful how we are doing this, being very thoughtful and we really trying to incorporate as many different opinions as a gift to come to a consensus how we treat this material. [inaudible question] no. This material was potentially set aside for public outreach. And so this material will not be used for Scientific Research in the future. That was an agreement with nasa for this. In terms of transport, so i brought two different specimens. One, the Research Specimens i thought i later ntca after flight from houston and took the matter over here. [laughing] and so you know, people, good debbie nta can say the transport a piece of bennu. [laughing] the second piece i actually only got her monday night i landed at 10 p. M. About 10 p. M. And it took over here. I was only one walking in from parking with a sample of the asteroid and walked to security and appear and opened it up and i was beyond thrilled to see it was still in one piece. Was the briefcase handcuffed keira . It was not to let say it it never left my site so, you know. Any other questions to ask handcuffed to the rest. On the other side of the wall is the hope diamond. I was hoping were going to find diamonds and rubies. [laughing] nasa funding. I think we found Something Better than diamonds and rubies. We found water and carbon. Amen. Well said. Thank you to our team. We will be available for other images retina and this will be open for the public when everything included in this location. If you have a question . Okay. Thank you so much. [applause]