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Meet the Wildcats of OSIRIS-REx
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BYJESSICA SURIANO @jessicasuriano
DAILYWILDCAT.COM Friday, Sept. 16, 2016 – Sunday, Sept. 18, 2016 VOLUME 110 ISSUE 11
OPINIONS | PAGE 8
THE ARTS ARE TOUGH AND SO ARE YOU. DON’T LISTEN TO THE HYPE, DO YOU AND READ JULIAN CARDENA’S COLUMN
ARTS & LIFE | PAGE 11 THIS WEEK AT CONGRESS: EL TEN ELEVEN LAUNCHED ITS 2016 TOUR IN DOWNTOWN TUCSON COURTESY JACK TAYLOR
ULA’S ATLAS V ROCKET breaks free of its tethers at ignition. The 370-ton rocket sends the OSIRIS-REx spacecraft on it’s seven-year round-trip journey to asteroid Bennu. Developed in part by the UA, this spacecraft will be the first in history to return samples of an asteroid to Earth. This photo was taken by a sound-triggered camera at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station’s Launch Complex 41.
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OSIRIS-REx is headed to the asteroid Bennu. In its departure, it not only left Earth for the fairer heavenly bodies—the tiny spacecraft left behind a whole team of UA scientists who helped bring it to life and dozens more who will continue to watch over it during the seven year journey. Now that OSIRIS-REx is on its way, it is time to meet some of the Wildcats who worked on the project in collaboration with NASA, and learn about the different roles their efforts played in the thus-far successful mission. Bradley Williams, a systems engineering graduate student, helped build the camera suite aboard OSIRIS-REx. The suite is comprised of three cameras—the PolyCam, MapCam and SamCam, each of which Williams said serve a different purpose. The PolyCam’s function is to look at Bennu from a farther distance and will be used while the spacecraft is still approaching the asteroid. The PolyCam should be able to show NASA if there is anything rotating around the asteroid.And the MapCam will be able to show specifically what is on the asteroid by using color footage. The SamCam will be the camera that gets closest to the asteroid, touches it, collects a sample of the asteroid and examines it before bringing it back to Earth. “The flight cameras that are in space today took about two and a half years from the design to the installation on the spacecraft,” Williams said. Just the team working hands-on specifically with the cameras consisted of more than 50 people, but according to Williams, there were hundreds of people with whom the team connected to help the cameras get on the spacecraft smoothly for launch. “I went to the UA mainly because of their heritage and their background in space science,” Williams said. “Showing that the university can lead a team and help identify
OSIRIS-REx, 6
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