Teams behind OSIRIS-REx win prestigious aviation award [Video]

TUCSON, Ariz. (13 News) – The University of Arizona, NASA and Lockheed Martin have won the Robert J. Collier Trophy for their work on the OSIRIS-REx mission that returned a sample of the asteroid Bennu last fall.

The National Aeronautic Association, which gives the award every year, made the announcement Tuesday. The Collier Trophy, awarded since 1911, is one of the most prestigious honors in aviation, recognizing the “performance, efficiency and safety of air or space vehicles.”

In earning the trophy, the OSIRIS-REx team joins ranks that include the team behind the James Webb Space Telescope, the crew of NASA’s Apollo 11 mission, and legendary aviators such as Orville Wright and Chuck Yeager. The list of Collier recipients represents a timeline of the most groundbreaking aviation achievements that created today’s aerospace industry.

“It’s an awesome crowd to be affiliated with,” said Dante Lauretta, OSIRIS-REx principal investigator and a Regents Professor of planetary sciences at the UArizona Lunar and Planetary Laboratory. “It hammers home …