Asteroid Bennu, OSIRIS-REx, and the Apollo 11 moon microbe scare: The challenge of bringing samples home from space

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A couple weeks ago, NASA did something they’d never done before: they collected material from an asteroid and brought it back to Earth. These samples — harvested as part of the OSIRIS-REx mission — could tell us more about our planet's beginnings and even reveal information about the origins of life.

But collecting samples from space doesn't come without risk. In this episode, we delve into the heated debates among geologists and biologists during the construction of the Lunar Receiving Laboratory (LRL) in the 1960s, in preparation for the Apollo 11 mission in 1969 — the first to put a human on the moon. We didn't bring back anything harmful, which is fortunate because flaws in protocols and the LRL design would not have prevented a moon microbial crisis here on Earth. But we can learn from those mistakes and apply what we now know to other fields such as artificial intelligence and climate change. Links to the Tiny Show & Tell stories are here and here. Pick up a Tiny Matters mug here! All Tiny Matters transcripts are available here.