posted 05-02-2023 10:50 AM               

Bennu, named for the ancient Egyptian phoenix, was the chosen destination of OSIRIS-REx, NASA's premier mission of asteroid exploration, launched in 2016. Study of the asteroid is important in safeguarding the future of planet Earth, but Bennu is also a time capsule from the dawn of our Solar System, holding secrets over four-and-a-half billion years old about the origin of life and Earth as a habitable planet.

In 2020 the OSIRIS-REx spacecraft successfully landed on the surface of Bennu and collected pristine asteroid material for delivery to Earth in September 2023. Scientific studies of the samples, along with data collected during the rendezvous, promise to help find answers to some of humanity's deepest questions: Where did we come from? What is our destiny in space?

This book, the world's first complete (and stereoscopic) atlas of an asteroid, is the result of a unique collaboration between OSIRIS-REx mission leader Dante Lauretta and Brian May's London Stereoscopic Company. Lauretta's colleagues include Carina Bennett, Kenneth Coles, and Cat Wolner, as well as Brian May and Claudia Manzoni, who became part of the ultimately successful effort to find a safe landing site for sampling. The text details the data collected by the mission so far, and the stereo images have been meticulously created by Manzoni and May from original images collected by the OSIRIS-REx cameras.

• Hardcover: 208 pages
  
• University of Arizona Press (July 27, 2023)
  
• ISBN-10: ‎0816551766
  
• ISBN-13: 978-0816551767

posted 09-05-2023 07:42 AM               

While advertised as the world's first complete atlas of an asteroid (and in stereoscopic 3-D) it's much more than that — it does an excellent job covering background and history of asteroids in general as well as Bennu in particular. The image presentation and layout is varied and wonderful.

Authors

• Dante Lauretta: his first mass-market book (Dr. Lauretta is the Principal Investigator for the OSIRIS-REx New Frontiers mission for asteroid sample return. His solo book The Asteroid Hunter is due March 2024. He has hundreds of scientific papers)

• Brian May: an astrophysicist whose books include four other stereoscopic collections, "Bang!" (with Sir Patrick Moore et.al.) and "The Red Special." After starting his astrophysics studies he digressed into music as well.

• Carina Bennett: Software engineer and Project Manager with a creative writing background

• Kenneth Coles: Educator, planetary scientist and co-author of "The Atlas of Mars: Mapping its Geography and Geology"

• Claudia Manzoni: chemical engineer/material researcher and astro-stereographer (contributed to the book "Mission Moon 3-D," also worked on stereography of Ryugu and the Didymos system).

• Cat Wolner Geoscience researcher and now Chief Editor and Documentarian for OSIRIS-REx.