Public Lecture: To Bennu and Back

Public Lecture: To Bennu and Back: Using asteroids to reveal the geological history of the Solar System

Asteroids are the building blocks of the Solar System, providing a detailed record of the processes and events that shaped the planets. Dark C-type asteroids are thought to contain water and organic matter and were likely an important source of hydrogen, carbon, nitrogen, and prebiotic molecules to the early Earth. We can learn about the composition of C-type asteroids from meteorites, but these rocks only reveal part of the story due to terrestrial contamination. JAXA’s Hayabusa2 and NASA’s OSIRIS-REx missions therefore set out to collect and return to Earth pristine samples of the C-type asteroids Ryugu and Bennu, respectively. I’ll talk about what we’ve learnt from Ryugu and give an update on the first analyses of Bennu samples.