$2M Gift Advances UArizona Space Science Initiatives pressreleasepoint.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from pressreleasepoint.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
Among those following along was assistant professor and cosmochemist
Jessica Barnes, assistant professor of planetary sciences and a collaborating sample scientist on the mission. She and her colleagues at the UArizona Lunar and Planetary Laboratory were elated when the touch-and-go event succeeded. Then they worried after the mission team learned some particles were escaping the sample collector and spent two days working around the clock to secure the material. That was a really surreal time, Barnes said.
Around the time Barnes learned the collector head had been closed with an abundant sample, she received more good news: Someone had made a $1.5 million gift toward sample analysis. The gift will enable the purchase of a nanoscale secondary ion mass spectrometer, an instrument the analysis team will use to help find answers to fundamental questions about the origins of the solar system. The project is funded in part by a grant from the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, as we