by S. Prasad Ganti
The spacecraft OSIRIS-REx passed close to the Earth to paradrop off a sample of material it scooped from the asteroid Bennu about three years back. The sample has landed safely in the deserts of Utah, while the spacecraft is on its way to another asteroid Apophis. The sample will be taken to John Space Center where it will be meticulously studied for months and years.
It is not the first time we got samples from outer space beyond the moon. The Genesis spacecraft which collected solar wind particles dropped a sample in 2004, but due to some miscalculation in the design of the landing system, the sample crashed to the Earth. But some of the solar wind particles were recovered and studied. One of the conclusions of the study is that Earth lost some of its atmosphere early in its history.
Next, the Stardust spacecraft picked up samples from a comet called Wild-2. The samples landed safely in the deserts of Utah in 2006. The comet is considered a fresh comet since it made very few orbits around the Sun. It lost very few of its original particles of gas and dust.
Similarly the Japanese spacecraft Hayabusa 2 visited the asteroid Ryugu and dropped off samples in 2020. Earlier, the lunar samples have been returned by the Chinese, Russians and NASA. In addition to the Apollo astronauts bringing back some of the samples with them.
Launched in 2016, OSIRIS-REx (having a fancy acronym – Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification, Apophis Explorer, Regolith Explorer). In 2020, it did a touch and go scooping of the sample by hovering over the surface of Bennu and kicked up the regolith using its nitrogen thrusters.
Asteroids are found in large numbers in the Asteroid belt, between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter around the sun. These are the remnants from the formation of our solar system. Something like the garbage dump where excess construction material are thrown away. Fortunately, such construction garbage dumps provide information on the material that went into the construction of the building.
These efforts to collect samples are involved with expensive space missions. Besides these, there are free samples which come to the Earth all the time. The book “Impact” by Greg Brennecaka covers the phenomena of hundred tons of meteoritic material which falls to the Earth from space each day. Most of them are in the form of dusty meteorites. Some are rocks and bigger objects which burn off most of the time through the perilous journey through the Earth’s atmosphere. This tells us the importance and the challenges of safely guiding the returned samples to the surface of the Earth.
Meteorites are postulated to have brought the metals found in the Earth’s crust, organic material, and water. The original metals from the formation of Earth sank to the molten core long ago. What is being mined today are courtesy the carriers from outer space.
Some of the meteorites called carbonaceous chondrites have a matrix-like structure which holds water and organic molecules. Some of the organic molecules are the L (left) type amino acids which are the basis of higher forms of life like us. Meteorites also contain phosphorus, a critical component for life, but not found in reduced form on earth. We might owe our existence to these gifts from outer space. And we crave to study them and bring more of them by sending return missions into outer space.
The human quest to understand our origins and possibly the originator are centuries old. Although the spiritual and scientific methods differ, the common quest still remains the same.
Amateur Astronomers Association of Princeton 
A Year of Oppenheimer
by Gene Allen
Some of us followed the recommendation at the November 8, 2022, AAAP meeting to read American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer. Even though the book bogged down in minutiae of the hearing testimony, its beginnings were quite enlightening and entertaining. A handful of AAAP members were sufficiently interested to attend what was to me a disappointing live chat with its author, Kai Bird, at the Institute for Advanced Study on May 18. While there was some fun encountering a celebrated author live and in person, none of his responses to even intellectually appealing requests for depth and elaboration consisted of more than quotes from the book. One got no feeling that he had any personal involvement with the world of his subject. His Pulitzer-winning creation seemed no more than a project he had completed some time ago. It made me expect that his researcher and coauthor, the historian Martin J. Sherwin, would have been a more invested and interesting interviewee. He sadly died in October 2021, but it was interesting to learn that he had once held a faculty position at Princeton University.
American Prometheus is reported to be the starting point for Christopher Nolan’s movie “Oppenheimer” which was released this past July. One should always question the authenticity of any supposedly historical account, but in general movies are particularly unfaithful to truth. Most TV and movie representations of semiautomatic handgun operation, for example, are shamefully false. When the last round has been expended, the slide locks open. It is utterly impossible to point it at someone and be surprised that pulling the trigger gives an empty click sound. And don’t let me get started about aviation sequences. Most are too preposterous for me to abide even sitting through them. So how much license did Nolan take with his account?
An alumni contact email in late September led me to an impressively erudite review of “Oppenheimer” at < https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/fact-fiction-and-the-father-of-the-bomb-on-christopher-nolans-oppenheimer/ >.
The reviewer, Alex Wellerstein, is a professor of science and technology studies at the Stevens Institute of Technology in Hoboken, New Jersey, and the author of Restricted Data: The History of Nuclear Secrecy in the United States, which appeared from the University of Chicago Press in 2021. He also writes Restricted Data: The Nuclear History Blog online, and his next book will be on atomic policy during the Truman administration. Wellerstein’s command of the historical record borders on awesome and his forensic evaluation of the movie is even-handed. He is neither derisive nor patronizing. Overall, one comes away with the sense that it is a worthy production. While sitting in a theater for three hours is not appealing, the movie will certainly deserve my attention when it reaches streaming services.