1. PI BLOG: OSIRIS-REx – Seeking Answers to the Sweet Mystery of Life

    April 28, 2015 -

    Guest Blogger: Jason Dworkin.  The nature of the origin of life is a topic that has engaged people since ancient times. Where did we come from? What was the first life? How are we related? Are we alone? The study of biologic remains and environments preserved in rocks (fossils) and biochemical pathways and structures […]

  2. PI BLOG: NASA’s OSIRIS-REx Asteroid Mission Will Use Vacuum Chamber for Testing Spacecraft Instruments

    April 22, 2015 -

    Originally posted on LACO Technologies Tech Blog:
    NASA’s OSIRIS-REx mission will send a spacecraft in September 2016 to the asteroid Bennu in order to extract a sample and bring it back to earth. Bennu is a carbon-rich asteroid that records the earliest history of our Solar System, and by studying a piece of it we could discover the origin of life. Bennu is…

  3. PI BLOG: Development of the OSIRIS-REx Sampling System: TAGSAM and the SRC

    April 20, 2015 -

    In addition to continued progress in the building the OSIRIS-REx spacecraft and scientific instruments, the team at Lockheed Martin has been busy assembling and testing two key components of the system. The Touch-and-Go Sample Acquisition Mechanism (TAGSAM) is the device that satisfies all sample-acquisition requirements. TAGSAM consists of two major components: a sampler head and […]