OSIRIS-REx News
Nicole Lunning, OSIRIS-REx Curator
Volume 7 No. 3 • November 2025
The OSIRIS-REx curation team (Figure 1) has continued to expand the breadth and depth of the NASA OSIRIS-REx catalog - this newsletter includes the third update of the catalog since its initial publication in March 2024. In this update, there are 46 newly announced samples plus additional sample splits of pre-existing samples processed by the curation team and/or returned from investigators.
We have continued to slowly and steadily x-ray computed tomography (XCT) scan pristine samples. XCT scans are valuable resources for understanding Bennu particles while keeping them curation pristine. These scans enable the curation team to fulfill sample requests while also preserving the long-term collection. XCT scans collected of OSIRIS-REx samples for catalog development are available upon request - both as tiff stack videos that are viewable with a broad range of available video software and/or as XCT data cubes that can be analyzed with specialized software. We pristine XCT scanned an additional 17 particles since the last newsletter for a collection total of 59 pristine XCT scanned particles (some of which have subsequently been subdivided and/or allocated).
The following samples were XCT scanned since the last newsletter:
OREX-800015-0; OREX-800016-0; OREX-800046-0; OREX-800137-0;
OREX-800138-0; OREX-800153-0; OREX-800154-0; OREX-800157-0; OREX-800158-0; OREX-800159-0; OREX-800160-0; OREX-800171-0; OREX-800184-0; OREX-800185-0; OREX-800191-0; OREX-800201-0; OREX-800202-0.
The following additional particles have been newly designated as "not to be XCT scanned" per the collection conservation plan:
OREX-800081-0; OREX-800139-0; OREX-800152-0; OREX-800173-0; OREX-800188-0; OREX-800200-0.
We have added text descriptions of pristine XCT scanned particles for an additional 38 samples since the last newsletter and are currently caught up on adding descriptions for pristine scanned particles.
The next sample request deadline for OSIRIS-REx samples curated by NASA will be Tuesday January 20, 2026. The curation team is actively working on processing samples for approved/selectable sample requests from the first and second review rounds, processing the last samples to be transferred to OSIRIS-REx mission international partner the Canadian Space Agency (CSA), and preparing to support numerous samples to be returned from the mission sample analysis team in early 2026. Thus, the curation team is only able to commit to allocating twenty samples for this next sample request deadline. With this newsletter release, we have updated the collection conservation plan including additions to the Restricted Access Collection List.
If you are considering submitting a sample request for this round and have questions, please feel welcome to reach out via email to the collection curator (Dr. Nicole Lunning).
