Extinctions: Showdown of the giant space rocks

Dani DellaGiustina is one of the youngest leaders of a NASA mission, and she was in charge of image processing for OSIRIS-REx before she even got her PhD. OSIRIS-REx is a spacecraft sent to study asteroid Bennu and scheduled to return a sample to Earth in 2023. Dani walks us through the difference between asteroids and comets—it turns out there’s some overlap! There’s even a thing called “extinct comets,” and some think Bennu might be one, but Dani isn’t so sure. Along the way, Dani tells us about her non-traditional career path and attempts to avoid polar bears in Greenland.This episode was produced by Katrina Jackson and mixed by Collin Warren.