Matthew Jenkins and his son Mateo Jenkins. Photo credit to Judy Jenkins.
Matthew Jenkins, a 2000 graduate of Lake Highlands High School, is a part of the team that successfully brought back the OSIRIS-REx.
OSIRIS-REx is a spacecraft that was launched into space seven years ago by NASA. Its job was to collect an asteroid sample from Bennu, a massive space rock that could potentially collide with our planet in the future, according to NASA.
Jenkins graduated from the University of Colorado Boulder with a degree in pure math and electrical engineering. His love for science started at the Science Place Preschool, which is now the Perot Museum of Nature and Science. He attended the science camp there every summer.
Now, Jenkins is on the Lockheed Martin team in Colorado for the NASA recovery project. He began in Near Space and then went on to join the Deep Space division. Jenkins has worked on projects for Jupiter and the moon as well.
The spacecraft, OSIRIS-REx, landed this morning and the samples are set to be transported to the Johnson Space Center in Houston to be evaluated.
