[music throughout] As we started to approach Bennu
from a distance and it started to fill up the camera field of view
it looked exactly like we thought it would
with a few boulders sticking out. But as we got closer we expected to see a very sandy surface
with maybe a few boulders here and there, and what we saw is
very little sand. And we saw these mountains, we saw boulders, we saw rocks
we saw very few areas that had this sandy surface that we were expecting and that we had designed for
We have never done this before.
We're actually going to collect a sample and bring it back down to Earth for further examination by scientists.
In order to achieve that objective
the OSIRIS-REx spacecraft has been navigating around Bennu for about the last two years
studying it in great detail, and also overcoming a number of challenges that Bennu has presented.
We were looking for locations on Bennu that were 50 meters in diameter
relatively flat and covered with fine-grained material.
and by fine-grained material, I mean stuff that's the size of a dime or smaller.
We realized that there were no sites on Bennu that even came close to meeting this criteria
Everywhere we looked was too small and covered with boulders
So we actually had to fly a number of additional close pases over the asteroid
and rethink our entire plan for grabbing the sample