"Inside the $1 Billion NASA Deal to Prevent an Earth-Shattering Asteroid Collision"

NASA awarded a billion dollars to Dante Lauretta in 2011 to lead a mission to study asteroid Bennu, a potentially catastrophic threat to Earth. The OSIRIS-REx spacecraft successfully collected a sample from Bennu in a historic mission, marking a significant achievement in space exploration and planetary defense. If Bennu were to impact Earth, it would cause a major natural and humanitarian disaster, with devastating consequences. The book "The Asteroid Hunter: A Scientist’s Journey to the Dawn of our Solar System" by Dante Lauretta provides an in-depth account of this mission and the potential impact of Bennu.