by Move over, moon rocks: Space Center Houston has a new type of space rock on display.
The official visitor center for NASA’s Johnson Space Center on Friday (March 1) was only the second place in the world where the public can see a sample of the asteroid Bennu as it was collected and brought back to Earth by the space agency’s OSIRIS-REx mission.
“It’s rare that you have a piece of an asteroid,” said Paul Spana, director of collections and curator of Space Center Houston, in an interview with collectSPACE.com. “There have only been two previous asteroid sample missions, which the Japanese did several years ago, and they were only able to return a very small amount.”
“Other than that, there are no other examples on display in the world except at the Smithsonian and soon the University of Arizona. So, in that case, it is rarer than the moon rocks,” said Spana.
Related: OSIRIS-REx: A complete guide to NASA’s asteroid sampling mission
The 0.005-ounce (0.15 gram) pebble represents just 0.1% of the total material collected by OSIRIS-REx (Origin, Spectral Imaging, Resource Identification, and Security-Regolith Explorer) from the asteroid Bennu in October 2020 and returned on Earth in September 2023. Held inside a small stainless steel bottle in a pure nitrogen environment, the black rock with white spots is displayed under a magnifying glass, due to its reduced size.
“I also spent a lot of time trying to figure out the right height, where it was good for the kids and not too low where adults had to bend way further,” said Spana. “I made marks on my office wall trying to get that height. We tested it with the real example last night, and it worked well.”
Located just inside the main entrance to Space Center Houston, on the path visitors take to access the Starship Gallery, Lunar Samples Vault and the outdoor display of NASA’s 747 Shuttle Carrier Aircraft in Independence Plaza, the new OSIRIS exhibit includes- REx video too. a presentation that briefly explains the history of the mission and provides a close-up 360-degree view of the sample on display, as well as a computer tomography scan revealing the interior of the rock.
“It has a high carbon content with oxygen, hydrogen and nitrogen. And what’s amazing about that from the scientists’ point of view is that the clay is saturated with water – speaking of hydrogen and oxygen – . building blocks of the size you need for life, and that’s one of the most exciting discoveries they made studying the samples at Johnson Space Center,” said Spana.
Guests wishing to learn more about the sample can receive a short presentation from Space Center Houston staff every hour in front of the exhibit.
The sample is on loan from NASA for two years, although Spana is hopeful that the agreement will be renewed.
To celebrate the debut of the sample, the first 200 visitors to the exhibition on Friday were awarded a 3D-printed model of Bennu as a souvenir. For those who were unable to attend or arrived later, Space Center Houston made the file for the model available on their website for anyone to download and print for themselves.
The Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History in Washington, DC was the first to receive a specimen and unveiled its Bennu piece in November.
The University of Arizona’s Alfie Norville Gem and Mineral Museum in Tucson is set to display the third and final fragment of the asteroid on public display Wednesday (March 6). The evening event will include a presentation by OSIRIS-REx principal investigator Dante Lauretta, who is a regents professor and director of the Arizona Astrobiology Center at the University of Arizona.
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Members of the OSIRIS-REx team will also be present at Space Center Houston, who are working to analyze and catalog the samples at Johnson Space Center.
Salvador Martinez, lead astronomy curator engineer for OSIRIS-REx, Nicole Lunning, OSIRIS-REx lead sample curator, and Justin Filiberto, research office branch chief and acting branch chief curator officer within the Astromaterials Science Exploration and Research (ARES) division at Johnson Space Center, to participate in the presentation of the Thought Leaders Series in late March.
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