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UnDisciplined: How do you land on an asteroid?

Three people look at a medium-sized black sample capsule in the desert.
NASA/Keegan Barber/(NASA/Keegan Barber)
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(NASA/Keegan Barber)
NASA Sample Return Capsule Science Lead Scott Sandford, NASA Astromaterials Curator Francis McCubbin and University of Arizona OSIRIS-REx Principal Investigator Dante Lauretta, collecting data on Sunday, Sept. 24 shortly after the sample capsule landed.

In The Asteroid Hunter, Dante Lauretta chronicles the quest to retrieve a sample from Bennu, which is one of the large asteroids that is most likely to collide with the Earth.

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Matthew LaPlante has reported on ritual infanticide in Northern Africa, insurgent warfare in the Middle East, the legacy of genocide in Southeast Asia, and gang violence in Central America. But a few years back, something donned on him: Maybe the news doesn't have to be brutally depressing all the time. Today, he balances his continuing work on more heartbreaking subjects by writing books about the intersection of science, human health and society, including the New York Times best-selling <i>Lifespan</i> with geneticist David Sinclair and the Nautilus Award-winning <i>Longevity Plan</i> with cardiologist John Day. His first solo book, <i>Superlative</i>, looks at what scientists are learning by studying organisms that have evolved in record-setting ways, and his is currently at work on another book about embracing the inevitability of human-caused climate change with an optimistic outlook on the future.<br/>