OSIRIS-REx Camera Suite (OCAMS): Eyes of the Asteroid Explorer
NASA's OSIRIS-REx spacecraft contains five instruments to explore the asteroid Bennu, each of which provides important information for the mission. The OSIRIS-REx Camera Suite (OCAMS) consists of three cameras that were built at the University of Arizona: PolyCam, MapCam, and SamCam. These cameras will 'see' asteroid Bennu as the spacecraft first approaches it. OCAMS will then provide global image mapping and sample site imaging and characterization. Finally, OCAMS will record the entire sampling event during the touch-and-go (TAG) maneuver.
Transcript
00:00:00 I'll just give my response that I give to people everyday people when I'm at my like young professionals event I'm like they're like Oh what is what is that hey you know we're just going to grab a sample and bring it back and then we'll do then and the real science begins these Irish Rex is a mission to get a sample from the asteroid Bennett which is a carbonaceous asteroid image
00:00:37 asteroid as we approach it and then 200 cams is really the Syrus for X camera suite so we do a significant amount of imaging osiris-rex is her Center here at the U of A at the Drake building which has been responsible for multiple space missions many Mars missions where we have all the facilities we need we have a thorough vacuum chamber do any t-back testing that we were required to do and
00:01:02 then we have a class seven cleanroom where we build all the cameras and test them in the same environment GPU of a it has the principal investigators office with Dante Lauretta where he runs the science team and the entirety of the mission we have the Spock Center which does all of the processing of the spacecraft data but then we have oak Kansan and okay is the mission critical
00:01:27 camera system the three cameras have very three different very different roles to perform and as part of the mission but there the major visible light cameras for the spacecraft we do have in the back of our mind that you know most of what people are gonna see from this mission is going to be the pictures of the asteroid we realize we're kind of the PR firm for the
00:01:50 mission besides all the science value that the cameras do it's one of the more complex camera systems because of the number of boxes the number of cameras the wide set of requirements that the cameras have to achieve have to satisfy during their life the cameras just finished a milestone they passed their pre ship review that just the final review that
00:02:19 we have here at the University of Arizona before the cameras get delivered to Lockheed Martin where they get integrated to the spacecraft for the flight units at the U of A and a majority of the team certainly the the biggest part of our role on the team is is over it feels like if not even running a marathon or an Ironman competition I don't even know how to
00:02:44 explain it it's I imagine if it was an athlete it's like running up to an Olympics or something when you spend three or four years just working to this goal and then you're finally there and you get to see how everything performs it was actually fairly emotional there's a lot of pride associated with all the work we did and getting it done but it's also like wow this whole big chapter of
00:03:11 her life is sort of coming to an end all these things are my babies man you know I've worked on him for typically a flight camera you bring it there you've worked on it for a year only analogy that seems to match is watching your kids grow up delivering the flight instrument is you know like that's the the pinnacle of this whole project and getting it onto
00:03:40 the spacecraft safe and sound is as you know our primary focus right now he would think they're just cameras you know the technology isn't even all that challenging but everything is challenging when you do it in space and it involves a lot of people a lot of really amazing people with a lot of unique expertise I was describing to someone in the high bay the other day
00:04:11 that these things end up looking like pieces of art even though the intention was not to create art but the perfection of building the instrument making sure that the form follows a function it's a it's a really specialized than unique endeavor that we humans do we like to think of it as routine because we've been doing it for so long you know more than 50 years right but it's by no
00:05:01 means routine yeah at the end of the day what you know I'm it's a lot of pride that yes I hate I was part of a team that did this and yeah there's pride of being in the team and then there's definitely it's like yeah I was able to create that you were in the eyes of the Explorer and that's what these cameras are there's our there's our eyes out there exploring the universe and you saw
00:05:31 it for the first time at something nobody's ever seen before that to me is the exciting part is when you you get knocked backward and surprised and something completely defeats your your preconceptions you will absolutely never forget that you're so unique and not too many people get to see that