The Lead Scientist Behind NASA's Asteroid Mission Talks About The Biggest Problems They Solved

Dante Lauretta has been working on the OSIRIS REx mission for the better part of 2 decades, all the way from the early proposal, through the design of mission, target selection and the experimentation with the sample acquisition process. Even after launch there are new problems they've had to solve to support the plan of returning a substantial sample of a primitive asteroid and return it to Earth.

And, on top of that he has a hobby of designing board games too, he's currently running a crowdfunding campaign to support the development of an updated version of Xtronaut

If you are interested in the other games and don't want to get involved in Crowdfunding you can buy them from Amazon

Dante is also on Twitter:

[nassospanago]

"small mountain in space" has got to be the best description of a small asteroid! It immediately transported me into space (figuratively unfortunately)...

[ParameterGrenze]

An interview with good questions. This is Scott Manley after all, space nerd supreme, not some random YT science popularizer.

[manuellorenzo]

4:25 I really wanted to see that animation finish...

[choerm]

I was part of NASA's Mission Concept Academy where we got a great session from these guys about their design. We were currently designing an asteroid lander ourselves, so the lecture was amazingly helpful. Every part of the design process was amazing to hear about. I really got hooked on NASA missions there. If anyone's interested, I would thoroughly recommend applying to the academy.

[calculon]

It's so refreshing to have an interview with someone who really knows what they're talking about and who is articulate enough to communicate it well.

[wmbredbenner]

Wonderful interview with well-selected b-roll for illustration. Scott really outdid himself on this one. We need to get him nominated for an Emmy -- especially since NASA and SpaceX just nabbed one last year.

[jnelchef]

Outstanding interview! The pictures really illustrate the "rubble pile" nature of Bennu.

[AboveBeyondVapor]

Scott, this was a fantastic interview! Very easy to understand!

[danieljensen]

Great interview Scott! It really helps to have someone who has been following this and knows more or less what's going on being the one asking questions rather than a clueless reporter. Great editing as well, the graphics were very helpful for getting a feel for what he was talking about.

[sinister]

I studied under him at university of Arizona.

[htunoo]

You deserve the best credit for bringing on this clip. Many thanks to both of you.

[paranor]

Thank you CosmoQuest team.
So... many... rocks...

[bilrags]

Scott Excellent interview. I have been following this mission from their website, but got much more meaningful information from this interview. Mr. Lauretta's presentation was excellent. Thanks to you both.

[Cedo]

I can’t overstate how great this kind of content is ! Thank you so much for this !!!

[noxabellus]

This was so cool Scott it'd be awesome to get more content like this in the future

[dtalert]

this was excellent.
the two of you interacted very well.
he occasionally dropped some vocabulary, but explained them in understandable terms.
the graphics enhanced the words spoken and weren't too busy.
he didn't shy away from showing they went down some dead ends and what they learned from those (real science).
he definitely opened my eyes to the amount of detective work done to give the project the highest chance of success.

overall, i didn't realize that almost half on hour of my time had gone by until you started the outro and i looked up and saw the time hack.

[aerospacefuzz]

Having met Dante he was amazing to talk with, such a cool mission and thanks for the extended interview!

[therealjoshuacaleb]

This guy is cool, more people like this doing interviews please.

[dmeemd]

I've been hoping for you to do a video on this topic and this interview was just AWESOME! I absolutely love how much you do for spreading knowledge to all wakes of life. Thanks for another great video and thanks for all that you do for the science community and everyone as a whole! 😊

[Fake_Blood]

I wish I could walk around on Bennu in VR. Looks like it's completely mapped out in 3D.