Keynote Speaker 2018_Saturday

 

 Optics for NASA’s OSIRIS-REx Mission

The OSIRIS-REx spacecraft is traveling to Bennu, a carbonaceous asteroid whose regolith may record the earliest history of our solar system. Bennu may contain the molecular precursors to the origin of life and the Earth’s oceans. Bennu is also one of the most potentially hazardous asteroids, as it has a relatively high probability of impacting the Earth late in the 22nd century. OSIRIS-REx will use a complement of remote sensing instruments spanning the electromagnetic spectrum from X-rays all the way to the far infrared to map and navigate around the asteroid, determine Bennu’s physical and chemical properties, and guide the spacecraft to a location where the spacecraft will take a sample of the asteroid to return to Earth for analysis. This presentation will introduce the optical remote sensing and navigation instruments onboard the OSIRIS-REx spacecraft and take a more in depth look at the design, fabrication, qualification, and calibration of the three camera systems which make up the OSIRIS-REx Camera Suite (OCAMS) that was developed at the University of Arizona.

Learn more about OSIRIS-REx: click here

 

Speaker’s Bio:

After earning a PhD from the University of Arizona’s College of Optical Sciences in 2003, Dr. Drouet d’Aubigny worked as an optical research engineer and later as laboratory manager at Steward Observatory. There he worked on a number of ground-based astronomical instrumentation

projects and on technology for NASA’s Terrestrial Planet Finder. He left the University to become Vice-President of Engineering at a startup company, TeraVision Inc. where he led the development of Terahertz radar imaging for security applications. He returned to the University of Arizona and joined the Lunar and Planetary Laboratory in 2011. He is currently Deputy Instrument Scientist and Lead Optical Engineer for the OSIRIS-REx Camera Suite.