11/1/2024 Debra Levey Larson
Written by Debra Levey Larson
Successfully collecting a sample from an asteroid and returning it to Earth was accomplished in the fall of 2023 by NASA’s Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification, and Security-Regolith Explorer team, or OSIRIS-REx. Three members of the team are University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign aerospace engineering alumni. They shared in being honored with receiving the Robert J. Collier Award.
The three AE alums are Coralie Adam, B.S. ’11 - lead optical navigation engineer at KinetX; Jason Swensen, M.S. ’14 - flight dynamics engineer for NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center; and Beth Buck, B.S. ’89 - mission operations program manager. Buck is now retired but was at Lockheed Martin Space for 31 years.
About receiving the award, Adam said, “This past year has been a fun victory lap, as we swept up the industry awards. Receiving the Collier Trophy was the icing
on top! Seeing our team inscribed amongst the past 113 years of the greatest achievements in aeronautics or astronautics in America was an unbelievable honor.”
The OSIRIS-REx team included over 1,000 individuals and contributions from NASA’s partners at the University of Arizona, Goddard Space Flight Center, Lockheed Martin, KinetX, and many other supporting organizations. Read the full press release.
Since 1911, the National Aeronautic Association has awarded the Collier Trophy is for “the greatest achievement in aeronautics or astronautics in America, with respect to improving the performance, efficiency, and safety of air or space vehicles, the value of which has been thoroughly demonstrated by actual use during the preceding year.” Its recipients represent a timeline of air and space achievements.
At least one additional known U of I alum worked on the mission. Bashar Rizk, M.S. ’85 in physics was an instrument scientist on OSIRIS-Rex camera suite.
The full press release is available at https://naa.aero/osiris-rex-team-earns-the-2023-robert-j-collier-trophy/ .
A video about the team award is available at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pkaNm9-8jDI. Although on-camera speakers are not identified on the video, at approximately 1:16 into the under four-minute video, Coralie Adam comments.