February 9: Carl Hergenrother
“Journeying to the Asteroid Bennu and Back with the OSIRIS-REx Sample Return Mission”
OSIRIS-REx has traveled to a near-Earth asteroid called Bennu and will bring a small sample back to Earth for study. The mission launched Sept. 8, 2016, from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, reaching Bennu in 2018. Last October the spacecraft successfully collected a sample from the asteroid, which it will return to Earth in 2023.
Speaker: Carl Hergenrother was born in the Bronx and grew up in Oakland, New Jersey. After graduation from the University of Arizona, he became an observational astronomer at the University’s Lunar and Planetary Laboratory where he studied comets and asteroids. For the past 17 years, Carl has been a member of the observation planning and science teams of the NASA OSIRIS-REx mission to acquire samples from the carbonaceous near-Earth asteroid (101955) Bennu. Carl enjoys backyard observing where his “go to” equipment are a pair of Vixen 30×125 binoculars. He is the Comets Section Coordinator and Associate Director of the Association of Lunar and Planetary Observers (ALPO) as well as a board member of the American Meteor Society.
The February 9 Lecture will be held online, via Zoom Webinar. All are welcome to attend this free event. Register when logging into the webinar.
Room opens 6:50, Lecture begins 7:00 PM
