The Asteroid Hunter
A Scientist's Journey to the Dawn of Our Solar System
Failed to add items
Add to Cart failed.
Add to Wish List failed.
Remove from wish list failed.
Follow podcast failed
Unfollow podcast failed
Buy Now for $25.24
No default payment method selected.
We are sorry. We are not allowed to sell this product with the selected payment method
-
Narrated by:
-
Dante Lauretta
-
Sir Brian May
-
Written by:
-
Dante Lauretta
About this listen
A "captivating, behind-the-scenes account" of NASA’s historic OSIRIS-REx mission to return an asteroid sample and unlock the mystery of formation on life on earth braided with the remarkable life story of the mission’s leader, Dr. Dante Lauretta (Sara Seager).
On September 11, 1999, humanity made a monumental discovery in the vastness of space. Scientists uncovered an asteroid of immense scientific importance—a colossal celestial entity. As massive as an aircraft carrier and towering as high as the iconic Empire State Building, this cosmic titan was later named Bennu. Remarkable for much more than its size, Bennu belonged to a rare breed of asteroids capable of revealing the essence of life itself. But just as Bennu became a beacon of promise, researchers identified a grave danger. Hurtling through space, it threatens to collide with our planet on September 24, 2182.
Leading the expedition was Dr. Dante Lauretta, the Principal Investigator of NASA's audacious OSIRIS-REx Asteroid Sample Return Mission. Tasked with unraveling Bennu's mysteries, his team embarked on a daring quest to retrieve a precious sample from the asteroid's surface—one that held the potential to not only unlock the secrets of life's origins but also to avert an unprecedented catastrophe.
A tale of destiny and danger, The Asteroid Hunter chronicles the high-stakes mission firsthand, narrated by Dr. Lauretta. It offers listeners an intimate glimpse into the riveting exploits of the mission and Dr. Lauretta's wild, winding personal journey to Bennu and back. Peeling back the curtain on the wonders of the cosmos, this enthralling account promises a rare glimpse into the tightly woven fabric of scientific exploration, where technical precision converges with humanity’s profound curiosity and indominable spirit.
©2024 Dante Lauretta (P)2024 Grand Central PublishingYou may also enjoy...
-
Tropic Angel
- Archangel Aviation Thrillers, Book 1
- Written by: Nate Van Coops
- Narrated by: Scott Brick
- Length: 7 hrs and 22 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Former Blackhawk pilot Luke Angel wants nothing more than to enjoy the easy life he’s found in coastal Florida. He’s got a seaplane business, a well-trained dog, and a loyal and lovable crew to throw back margaritas with. But when a plane belonging to a friend goes missing from Luke’s airport, local detectives are understandably baffled. Clues are scattered from the Keys to the far side of the Gulf of Mexico, and Luke may be the only one with the connections to piece the puzzle back together.
-
-
Great listen
- By Shannon on 2025-01-18
Written by: Nate Van Coops
-
The Great River
- The Making and Unmaking of the Mississippi
- Written by: Boyce Upholt
- Narrated by: Gabriel Vaughan
- Length: 10 hrs and 18 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Over thousands of years, the Mississippi watershed was home to millions of Indigenous people who regarded "the great river" with awe and respect, adorning its banks with astonishing spiritual earthworks. But European settlers and American pioneers had a different vision: the river was a foe to conquer. In this landmark work of natural history, Boyce Upholt tells the epic story of human attempts to own and contain the Mississippi River, from Thomas Jefferson's expansionist land hunger through today's era of environmental concern
Written by: Boyce Upholt
-
Is Earth Exceptional?
- The Quest for Cosmic Life
- Written by: Mario Livio PhD, Jack Szostak PhD
- Narrated by: Graham Winton
- Length: 10 hrs and 36 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
For a long time, scientists have wondered how life has emerged from inanimate chemistry, and whether Earth is the only place where it exists. Charles Darwin speculated about life on Earth beginning in a warm little pond. Some of his contemporaries believed that life existed on Mars. It once seemed inevitable that the truth would be known by now. It is not. For more than a century, the origins and extent of life have remained shrouded in mystery. But, as Mario Livio and Jack Szostak reveal in Is Earth Exceptional?, the veil is finally lifting.
Written by: Mario Livio PhD, and others
-
Tripping on Utopia
- Margaret Mead, the Cold War, and the Troubled Birth of Psychedelic Science
- Written by: Benjamin Breen
- Narrated by: Suzanne Toren
- Length: 12 hrs and 53 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
A bold and brilliant revisionist take on the history of psychedelics in the twentieth century, illuminating how a culture of experimental drugs shaped the Cold War and the birth of Silicon Valley....
Written by: Benjamin Breen
-
The Light Eaters
- How the Unseen World of Plant Intelligence Offers a New Understanding of Life on Earth
- Written by: Zoë Schlanger
- Narrated by: Zoë Schlanger
- Length: 10 hrs and 56 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The Light Eaters is a deep immersion into the drama of green life and the complexity of this wild and awe-inspiring world that challenges our very understanding of agency, consciousness, and intelligence. In looking closely, we see that plants, rather than imitate human intelligence, have perhaps formed a parallel system.
-
-
so fascinating
- By Brittany on 2024-07-31
Written by: Zoë Schlanger
-
Glory Days
- Stories
- Written by: Simon Rich
- Narrated by: John Mulaney
- Length: 4 hrs and 5 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
From the Thurber Prize-winning author of New Teeth, hailed as “a triumph of sustained humor” (Sarah Lyall, New York Times Book Review), comes a hilarious and powerful collection of short stories chronicling the plight of aging millennials.
-
-
So much to love
- By Deckard on 2025-01-23
Written by: Simon Rich
-
Tropic Angel
- Archangel Aviation Thrillers, Book 1
- Written by: Nate Van Coops
- Narrated by: Scott Brick
- Length: 7 hrs and 22 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Former Blackhawk pilot Luke Angel wants nothing more than to enjoy the easy life he’s found in coastal Florida. He’s got a seaplane business, a well-trained dog, and a loyal and lovable crew to throw back margaritas with. But when a plane belonging to a friend goes missing from Luke’s airport, local detectives are understandably baffled. Clues are scattered from the Keys to the far side of the Gulf of Mexico, and Luke may be the only one with the connections to piece the puzzle back together.
-
-
Great listen
- By Shannon on 2025-01-18
Written by: Nate Van Coops
-
The Great River
- The Making and Unmaking of the Mississippi
- Written by: Boyce Upholt
- Narrated by: Gabriel Vaughan
- Length: 10 hrs and 18 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Over thousands of years, the Mississippi watershed was home to millions of Indigenous people who regarded "the great river" with awe and respect, adorning its banks with astonishing spiritual earthworks. But European settlers and American pioneers had a different vision: the river was a foe to conquer. In this landmark work of natural history, Boyce Upholt tells the epic story of human attempts to own and contain the Mississippi River, from Thomas Jefferson's expansionist land hunger through today's era of environmental concern
Written by: Boyce Upholt
-
Is Earth Exceptional?
- The Quest for Cosmic Life
- Written by: Mario Livio PhD, Jack Szostak PhD
- Narrated by: Graham Winton
- Length: 10 hrs and 36 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
For a long time, scientists have wondered how life has emerged from inanimate chemistry, and whether Earth is the only place where it exists. Charles Darwin speculated about life on Earth beginning in a warm little pond. Some of his contemporaries believed that life existed on Mars. It once seemed inevitable that the truth would be known by now. It is not. For more than a century, the origins and extent of life have remained shrouded in mystery. But, as Mario Livio and Jack Szostak reveal in Is Earth Exceptional?, the veil is finally lifting.
Written by: Mario Livio PhD, and others
-
Tripping on Utopia
- Margaret Mead, the Cold War, and the Troubled Birth of Psychedelic Science
- Written by: Benjamin Breen
- Narrated by: Suzanne Toren
- Length: 12 hrs and 53 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
A bold and brilliant revisionist take on the history of psychedelics in the twentieth century, illuminating how a culture of experimental drugs shaped the Cold War and the birth of Silicon Valley....
Written by: Benjamin Breen
-
The Light Eaters
- How the Unseen World of Plant Intelligence Offers a New Understanding of Life on Earth
- Written by: Zoë Schlanger
- Narrated by: Zoë Schlanger
- Length: 10 hrs and 56 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The Light Eaters is a deep immersion into the drama of green life and the complexity of this wild and awe-inspiring world that challenges our very understanding of agency, consciousness, and intelligence. In looking closely, we see that plants, rather than imitate human intelligence, have perhaps formed a parallel system.
-
-
so fascinating
- By Brittany on 2024-07-31
Written by: Zoë Schlanger
-
Glory Days
- Stories
- Written by: Simon Rich
- Narrated by: John Mulaney
- Length: 4 hrs and 5 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
From the Thurber Prize-winning author of New Teeth, hailed as “a triumph of sustained humor” (Sarah Lyall, New York Times Book Review), comes a hilarious and powerful collection of short stories chronicling the plight of aging millennials.
-
-
So much to love
- By Deckard on 2025-01-23
Written by: Simon Rich
-
The Witchstone
- Written by: Henry H. Neff
- Narrated by: Ramiz Monsef
- Length: 17 hrs and 43 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Meet Laszlo, eight-hundred-year-old demon and Hell’s least productive Curse Keeper. From his office beneath Midtown, he oversees the Drakeford Curse, which involves a pathetic family upstate and a mysterious black monolith. It’s a sexy enough assignment—colonial origins, mutating victims, et cetera—but Laszlo has no interest in maximizing the curse’s potential; he’d rather sunbathe in Ibiza, quaff martinis, and hustle the hustlers on Manhattan’s subway.
-
-
Complicated anti-heroes you hate to love!
- By Bethany on 2024-07-20
Written by: Henry H. Neff
-
The Man With Two Names: A Novel of Ancient Rome
- The Sertorius Scrolls, Book 1
- Written by: Vincent B. Davis II
- Narrated by: Joshua Saxon
- Length: 9 hrs and 42 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Rome, 107 BC. Quintus Sertorius just lost his father, and he may lose his home. When his rural village is stripped of its political status, he must leave his family to secure their food and protection from inside Rome's cutthroat government. As he transitions from countryman to politician, he's thrust into the middle of a bitter political war…. As Quintus struggles to gain the aid his village so desperately needs, he approaches Gaius Marius, the uncle of Julius Caesar himself.
Written by: Vincent B. Davis II
-
How to Walk into a Room
- The Art of Knowing When to Stay and When to Walk Away
- Written by: Emily P. Freeman
- Narrated by: Emily P. Freeman
- Length: 6 hrs and 46 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
What do you do when you start to feel a shift and must decide if it’s time to make a change? When it comes to navigating big decisions about when to stay and go, how can we know for sure when the time is right? Though we enter and exit many rooms over the course of our life—jobs, relationships, communities, life stages—knowing how and when it’s time to leave is a decision that rarely has a clear answer.
-
-
Unexpectedly religious
- By WTL on 2024-10-23
Written by: Emily P. Freeman
-
Floating Hotel
- Written by: Grace Curtis
- Narrated by: Braden Wright
- Length: 10 hrs and 3 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Welcome to the Grand Abeona Hotel: home of the finest food, the sweetest service, and the very best views the galaxy has to offer. All year round it moves from planet to planet, system to system, pampering guests across the furthest reaches of the milky way. The last word in sub-orbital luxury—and an absolute magnet for intrigue. Intrigues such as: Why are there love poems in the lobby inbox? How many Imperial spies are currently on board? What is the true purpose of the Problem Solver’s conference? And perhaps most pertinently—who is driving the ship?
-
-
Prose is nice but rambling weak storyline
- By SoulFood Wanderer on 2024-05-20
Written by: Grace Curtis
-
Under the Paper Moon
- Written by: Shaina Steinberg
- Narrated by: Carrie Coello
- Length: 8 hrs and 30 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
It's 1942, and as far as her father knows, Evelyn Bishop, heiress to an aeronautics fortune, is working as a translator in London. In truth, Evelyn—daring, beautiful, and as adept with a rifle as she is in five languages—has joined the Office of Strategic Services as a spy. Her goal is personal: to find her brother, who is being held as a POW in a Nazi labor camp. Through one high-risk mission after another, she is paired with the reckless and rebellious Nick Gallagher, growing ever close to him until the war's end brings with it an act of deep betrayal.
-
-
anachronistic almost to the point of ridulous
- By Tiffany on 2024-11-15
Written by: Shaina Steinberg
-
I Cheerfully Refuse
- Written by: Leif Enger
- Narrated by: David Aaron Baker
- Length: 11 hrs and 55 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Set in a not-too-distant America, I Cheerfully Refuse is the tale of a bereaved and pursued musician embarking under sail on a sentient Lake Superior in search of his departed, deeply beloved, bookselling wife. Rainy, an endearing bear of an Orphean narrator, seeks refuge in the harbors, fogs, and remote islands of the inland sea. Encountering lunatic storms and rising corpses from the warming depths, Rainy finds on land an increasingly desperate and illiterate people, a malignant billionaire ruling class, crumbled infrastructure, and a lawless society.
-
-
Fantastic!
- By Budb on 2024-09-17
Written by: Leif Enger
-
Sipsworth
- Written by: Simon Van Booy
- Narrated by: Christine Rendel
- Length: 5 hrs and 10 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Following the deaths of her husband and son, Helen Cartwright returns to the English village of her childhood after living abroad for six decades. Her only wish is to die quickly and without fuss. Helen retreats into her home on Westminster Crescent, becoming a creature of routine and habit. Then, one cold autumn night, a chance encounter with an abandoned pet mouse on the street outside her house sets Helen on a surprising journey of friendship.
-
-
Heart-warming tale
- By Kylee Anne Hingston on 2025-01-26
Written by: Simon Van Booy
-
The Stepford Wives
- Written by: Ira Levin
- Narrated by: January LaVoy, Grover Gardner
- Length: 3 hrs and 58 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Joanna Eberhart is a creative, self-possessed wife and mother, newly arrived in seemingly idyllic Stepford, Connecticut. But as she and her family begin settling in, she’s jarred by the unaccountable sameness of the local wives: all flawlessly attractive, with perfectly maintained homes—and little seeming interest in anything else. As curiosity turns to concern, Joanna finds herself unraveling a web of malice that threatens her very existence.
-
-
Elegantly Read and Perfectly Unsettling
- By Mara H on 2024-05-10
Written by: Ira Levin
-
The Sanctuary
- Written by: Andrew Hunter Murray
- Narrated by: Andrew Hunter Murray
- Length: 10 hrs and 3 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Ben is a painter from the crowded, turbulent city. For six months his fiancée, Cara, has been working on the remote island of Sanctuary Rock, the private estate of millionaire philanthropist Sir John Pemberley. Now she has decided to break off their engagement and stay there for good. Ben travels to the island to try and win Cara back. After an arduous journey, he finds himself compelled to stay. But as Ben begins to traverse Pemberley’s kingdom, he begins to uncover the truth of the apparently perfect society the enigmatic Sir John is building.
Written by: Andrew Hunter Murray
-
The Curse of Pietro Houdini
- A Novel
- Written by: Derek B. Miller
- Narrated by: Gabra Zackman
- Length: 11 hrs and 23 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Heartfelt, powerfully engaging, and in the tradition of Anthony Doerr’s All the Light We Cannot See, this is a work of storytelling bravado: a thrilling action-packed art heist, an imaginative chronicle of forgotten history, and a poignant coming-of-age epic where a child navigates one of the most morally complex fronts of World War II and lives to tell the tale.
-
-
Amazing story
- By Karen Fleming on 2024-11-01
Written by: Derek B. Miller
-
Witchcraft
- A History in Thirteen Trials
- Written by: Marion Gibson
- Narrated by: Rose Akroyd
- Length: 11 hrs and 2 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Offering a striking, dramatic journey unspooling over centuries and across continents, Witchcraft is a “well-rounded insight into some of the strangest and cruelest moments in history” (Buzz Magazine), giving voice to those who have been silenced by history.
-
-
If you’re curious about witches and their history: it’s a must !!
- By Brenda on 2024-12-09
Written by: Marion Gibson
-
The Haunting of Ashburn House
- Written by: Darcy Coates
- Narrated by: Eva Kaminsky
- Length: 9 hrs and 3 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Everyone knows about Ashburn House. They whisper its old owner went mad, and restless ghosts still walk the halls. They say it's the dwelling place of something cruel and sinister. But when Adrienne, desperate and in need of a place to stay, inherits the crumbling old mansion, she only sees it as a lifeline...until darkness falls.
-
-
This scared the be-Jeepers out of me
- By Anonymous User on 2025-01-23
Written by: Darcy Coates
What the critics say
"A beautifully written, first-hand report from the scientific leader of an awe-inspiring NASA mission, aimed at the pioneering delivery of material from an ancient asteroid to Earth. While the book educates us about the technological heights of human ingenuity, the returned asteroid material would teach us about our cosmic roots within the solar system and the organic molecules that sourced life on Earth."—Avi Loeb, Professor of Science at Harvard University and bestselling author of Extraterrestrial
"Human frailty and courage are at the heart of this unflinching book and this daring mission to understand what a rubble pile in space can tell us about life–its origins and its pageant here and now. The Asteroid Hunter explores the chancy beauty of a mission and its incredible team, its dedicated leader and the cosmos itself."—Christopher Cokinos, award-winning author of Still as Bright: An Illuminating History of the Moon from Antiquity to Tomorrow and The Fallen Sky: An Intimate History of Shooting Stars