(Interviewer) Do you see yourself as a P.I.
on a mission someday?
(Dani) I won't discount anything.
[music]
(Dante) In exactly 999 days from this moment,
our launch window will open up and OSIRIS-REx will be on
his journey into the inner solar system to asteroid Bennu.
(Dani) So I was first involved in the OSIRIS family
as an undergraduate student here at the University of Arizona.
But when the opportunity did develop
to join the OSIRIS-REx team as a junior image
processing scientist, I jumped on it.
(Mission control intercom) Status check.
Go, Atlas.
Go Centaur. Go OSIRIS-REx.
(Dani) And so I became the lead image processing
scientist for the mission.
My name is Dani DellaGiustina, and I'm the lead
image processing scientist for the OSIRIS-REx Mission.
It is my first time watching the launch of a NASA mission,
so I am thrilled. I'm super excited.
(Announcer) And lift off of OSIRIS-REx.
It's a seven year mission to boldly
go to the asteroid Bennu and back.
(Dani) It was a big learning experience for me,
but also a lot of fun and really solidified
that this is something that I want to do.
(Mission control intercom) O-REx MSA on O-REx Ops.
O-REx has descended below the five meter mark.
Hazard maps is go for tag.
(Woman from Tag Team) And we have touched down.
[applause]
(Dani) And then shortly
after we departed Bennu, I stepped into the role
as deputy principal investigator.
Now getting to lead as principal investigator
of the next phase of this OSIRIS journey
with OSIRIS-APEX is really exciting.
So OSIRIS-APEX is an extended mission that will follow
on the heels of the OSIRIS-REx NASA mission.
After the sample is brought back and dropped off on Earth,
the spacecraft doesn't really have a purpose.
And so last year we proposed to NASA to continue
to use the spacecraft, send it to a new object,
an asteroid called Apophis,
which it will rendezvous with in 2029.
And we're changing our name from OSIRIS-REx,
which stood for origins, spectral interpretation,
resource identification, security, regolith explorer
to OSIRIS-APEX
where APEX stands for the Apophis Explorer.
Asteroid Apophis is a pretty infamous object
because when it was discovered in 2004,
there was an initial scare
that it might impact the Earth in 2029.
It's a very close, approaching asteroid.
And later observations of Apophis
that same year indicated,
no, it's not going to impact the Earth in 2029.
However, it will get within 1/10 of the distance
between the earth and the moon,
and we'll be able to see it with the naked eye here on Earth.
It represents this class of potentially hazardous asteroids
well in a couple of key ways.
And we think that during the 2029 close encounter
with our own planet, where it gets this close,
that it might get disturbed by that gravitational
tug that our own planet is exerting on it.
And so we're really excited to send a spacecraft there
to observe the effects of this and also just to characterize it
as an analog for other potentially hazardous objects.
We are
also doing a couple of sporty things with the spacecraft.
So at Apophis
we plan to get really close, turn our thrusters up,
move a lot of material on the surface,
and then back away and take another look.
We want to see what it subsurface looks like
and we're excited for this spacecraft maneuver
that is going to help us do that.
It's a pretty incredible privilege
to wake up every day and explore space.
We're taking images often
of an object that nobody's ever seen before
or at scales that are unprecedented.
And so I am the first human in existence to witness something,
and that is just nuts and so cool.
And I never get tired of it.
And that's why I'm a scientist, because I am just addicted
to that feeling.
And I am so excited that I can
continue to do this type of exploration at Apophis.