Pristine X-Ray Computed Tomography Imaging of Stones Returned From Asteroid Bennu

NASA’s OSIRIS-REx mission collected 121.6 g of material from the surface of asteroid Bennu and returned it to Earth in September 2023. The Bennu sample is kept in a curation-pristine environment—that is, under gaseous nitrogen (GN2)—by the Astromaterials Acquisition and Curation Office at NASA JSC (JSC–Curation). A goal of JSC–Curation’s preliminary examination is the characterization of the bulk sample using nondestructive methods, including X-ray computed tomography (XCT). Here we discuss the acquisition of XCT data under curation-pristine conditions and show some of the textural variability in the returned sample.