Richard Burns

When the spacecraft OSIRIS-REx arrived at the asteroid Bennu in December 2018 with the objective to land, retrieve a rock sample and return it to Earth, the mission team expected to find a relatively smooth surface with plenty of good options for landing sites.

What they found was something else entirely: a rugged, jagged landscape with few level areas and many hazards.

That marked just one of the times NASA’s Rich Burns, project manager for OSIRIS-REx at Goddard Space Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, had to guide his team through an unexpected challenge on an ongoing mission that launched nearly nine years ago and returned the largest asteroid sample to Earth in 2023.

A portion of that sample is now powering more than 80 research projects at universities and institutions around the country, including the recent finding that the sample included all the chemical building blocks for life. This critical discovery could yield possible clues into the origins of life on Earth and shows that the essential ingredients for life existed in our early solar system.

“Rich’s leadership in those moments was critical,” said Lori Glaze, acting associate administrator for NASA’s Exploration Systems Development Mission Directorate. “OSIRIS-REx had to deal with one thing after another and Rich and the team problem-solved over and over again.”

“When you explore, you get the unexpected, and we got it in spades with OSIRIS-REx and Bennu,” added Burns.

With a little help from Queen guitarist and astrophysicist Brian May and the in-flight design of an entirely new guidance system capable of handling the precise maneuvers needed, Burns and the team settled on a feasible landing spot. In October 2020, after nearly two years in orbit around Bennu, OSIRIS-REx touched down successfully with a worldwide audience watching live.

The team encountered one more surprise before departure: The spacecraft collected so much rock, the lid on its sample collection capsule briefly refused to close.

“They ended up doing some spacecraft maneuvers trying to use a little momentum to get the lid closed and it worked,” said Cathy Barclay, deputy associate director of the astrophysics projects division at Goddard.

Almost three years later, in September 2023, the sample touched down in the Utah desert. On a modest $1 billion budget, Burns and the OSIRIS-REx team had managed to return the largest asteroid sample, about the size of an adult human hand, to Earth.

“We’re answering questions about the origin of life in the solar system, and that’s pretty fulfilling,” Burns said.

The mission has been so successful, and so cost-effective, that its lifespan has been extended. If all goes as planned, OSIRIS-REx will visit the asteroid Apophis, which scientists once thought was a prime candidate for a collision with Earth, in 2029.

“We try to maximize the return to not just science but to the taxpayer,” said Burns.