JAXA curation for Bennu samples returned by the NASA’s OSIRIS-REx missionOPEN ACCESS 

Rui Tahara, Kentaro Hatakeda, Masahiro Nishimura, Kasumi Yogata, Ryota Fukai, Akiko Miyazaki, Toru Yada, Yuma Enokido, Masanao Abe, Seiya Kawasaki, Ryosuke Sakurai, Tatsuaki Okada, Cedric Pilorget, Jean-Pierre Bibring, Vincent Hamm, Lionel Lourit, Damien Loizeau, Lucie Riu, Koki Yumoto, Yuichiro Cho, Seiji Sugita, Shumpei Nakahara, Shoki Mori, Yuta Aikyo, Shingo Kameda, Roger Stabbins, Yuta Shimizu, Hideaki Miyamoto, Yuya Hitomi, Arisa Nakano, Kana Nagashima, Haruna Sugahara, Shino Suzuki, Shunta Kimura, Tomohiro Usui

MAPS, Version of Record online: 23 October 2025

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“NASA’s OSIRIS-REx mission successfully collected and returned ~121.6 g of bulk samples from the B-type, near-Earth asteroid (101955) Bennu to Earth in September 2023. Upon returning to Earth, the samples were transported to the NASA Johnson Space Center where most of the samples have been stored and processed. On August 22, 2024, 0.5 wt% of Bennu samples (0.663 g) and a contact pad that collected particles from the surface of Bennu were permanently transferred to JAXA from NASA based on a Memorandum of Understanding and a letter of agreement between the two agencies. Following this, all the Bennu samples have been curated under nitrogen-purged gloveboxes, called clean chambers in a clean room at the Extraterrestrial Sample Curation Center in Sagamihara. While maintaining the pristinity of samples at the curation, we conduct a series of nondestructive analyses, including near-infrared spectroscopy within the clean chambers. Bennu curation was conceptualized primarily based on the Hayabusa2 curation, whereas lessons learned from the Hayabusa2 curation were integrated into designing Bennu curation. Here, we describe preparations for the Bennu curation, with an emphasis on the differences from the Hayabusa2 curation.”