Julia de León: "Every asteroid is different and reveals surprising things"

The IAC astronomer, Julia de León, is taking part in the Osiris-REx NASA mission, that will send a ship on 8 September to find Bennu, a primitive asteroid whose surface is covered in materials similar to those that were predominant at the beginning of the formation of the Solar System. According to this researcher, every asteroid is different and reveals surprising things.

Julia de León indicates in an interview with EFE that the Osiris-REx mission is the first in which NASA will send a probe to collect samples of an asteroid and bring them back to Earth, something that the Japanese Space Agency already did a decade ago on the Hayabusa mission with the asteroid Itokawa.

The scientist's research specialises in asteroids and in particular the compositional analysis of potential candidates to be "visited" by an unmanned space mission.