$2 Million Donation For UArizona Space Science Initiatives

A graduate of the University of Arizona has made a $2 million donation in support of its involvement in the OSIRIS-REx mission and the Giant Magellan Telescope.

Of the gift to UArizona, $1.5 million will go towards the analysis of the sample the OSIRIS-REx mission will bring back. The last $500,000 will go to staff and students of the University for more time using the Giant Magellan Telescope (GMT).

Operations will begin soon in the GMT’s home of Chile’s Atacama Desert. The anonymous donor previously made a large donation to reinforce the University’s future GMT discoveries.

President of UArizona President Robert C. Robbins said, “I am immensely grateful for this donor’s vision and support of space science exploration at the University of Arizona”. He also said “One of the most thrilling aspects of both of these projects is realizing how many members of our faculty and staff, as well as our students, are contributing to their success. It is incredible to have a graduate continue engaging with the university and supporting these missions.”

OSIRIS-REx is a NASA asteroid study and sample-return mission, the primary goal being to obtain a 60 g sample from 101955 Bennu, a carbon-rich asteroid near-Earth, and bring it home for analysis. In October, the spacecraft made the agency’s first attempt to collect a sample from the asteroid, led by UArizona.

UArizona’s Team Making Use of the Donation

Jessica Barnes, cosmochemist, assistant professor of planetary sciences, and collaborating sample scientist was elated along with her UArizona Lunar and Planetary Lab colleagues. Especially when the mission became “tough-and-go” after some particles were escaping the sample collector and required a two-day stint to secure the material.

This $1.5 million gift aids her team in sample analysis, it will allow for the purchase of a nanoscale secondary ion mass spectrometer. This will allow for very advanced imaging of a sample’s surface at high resolution, under 50 nanometres, and can give nanoscale isotope ratio measurements, as Barnes said it will allow investigation at the nanometre scale without destroying samples.

This is as UArizona states, “an instrument the analysis team will use to help find answers to fundamental questions about the origins of the solar system.” The project is funded in part by a grant from the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, founded by the co-founder of Intel, and in part funded by UArizona as well.

When speaking to professor of planetary sciences and principal investigator of OSIRIS-REx Dante Lauretta, Barnes said “I was emotional, as was Dante. To hear we have this wonderful gift that enables us to get this amazing piece of equipment – I had no idea that would happen at that time. It was just amazing”.

Lauretta said, “I was overwhelmed with emotion and joy and excitement – for Jessica, for the university, for our samples, for science, for our students and staff and everybody that’s going to be involved in the continuation of this amazing scientific adventure”.

Evidently, the donor’s gift came partly from the admiration of Barnes’ expertise in such sample analysis, and in aiding an early-career female scientist said the interim dean of the College of Science Elliott Cheu.

John-Paul Roczniak, president and CEO of the UArizona Foundation, said private donations and gifts can be crucial to these research problems. “This gift helps accelerate scientific breakthroughs. I’m grateful to this donor and all our supporters who make generous investments in research with far-reaching consequences for society,” Roczniak said.

The OSIRIS-REx spacecraft is planned to turn to Earth in September 2023, with the samples touching down at the Utah Test and Training Range. It will be initially identified at the Johnson Space Centre, a team led by Lauretta will begin a detailed analysis at UArizona, with the ultimate goal of exploring the solar system’s past.

“Depending on how much material we brought back from Bennu, scientists and students could be analyzing those materials a decade or even two or three decades into the future,” Barnes said.