(upbeat music plays) - [Tom] This week on "Arizona Illustrated", restoring the flora.

- [Jared] What we really want people to do is to think of their backyards as a piece of a whole ecology.

- [Announcer] Pia Camil, Three Works.

- [Pia] I'm usually very involved in my installations.

Fortunately, we could do a bunch of things via videos.

- [Announcer] And behind the scenes during the OSIRUS-REx Rex "Touch-And-Go" - [NASA Team Member] Going in.

- [NASA Team Member] And we have touchdown!

(cheering) (upbeat music plays) - Welcome to "Arizona illustrated".

I'm Tom McNamara.

And today we're coming from the University of Arizona campus where commencement 2021 is in the air.

You know, it's been a hard, unpredictable yet productive year.

And faculty, peers, and parents, will honor this year's graduating class at a series of virtual and in-person ceremonies May 11th to the 18th.

We'd like to congratulate the graduates and their families.

And the university asks that you remain flexible about the ceremony schedule.

As the coronavirus is still a very real threat.

Here's an update on the coronavirus in Arizona.

The state's rolling average of new cases of the Coronavirus has increased in the past two weeks.

While the daily deaths dropped during the same period, according to Johns Hopkins University data.

Vaccination numbers continue to improve.

That while two COVID-19 vaccination sites staffed by the federal emergency management agency opened at Pima Community College's Desert Vista and West campuses.

The mobile pods will travel to outlying areas of the community, serving populations that might not get the vaccine otherwise.

For more on that, and other coronavirus news, visit acpm.org.

Are you a plant person?

Gardening in the Sonoran desert has its challenges, like when to plant, where to plant, and probably the most important thing is what to plant.

There's a small family run nursery that feels it's their mission to restore native flora, Spade foot Nursery.

- Tonight's class is going to be sort of a beginner's class.

I want to ask you, do you still dress like this?

So why do people plant gardens like this?

This is an old way of thinking.

It's forcing plans to behave like furniture and plants are not furniture.

Plants are living things.

And this is all about making living things thrive in your backyard.

One of the things that dawned on me when we started the nursery is that we were giving people something they can actually do.

Because the problems out there are really big.

They're a lot bigger than us.

And one thing you have a large impact with is your own yard.

There are bees that don't have much bigger of an area their whole life than your yard.

- [Katy] We focus on native plants.

Specifically the Southwest US and Northern Mexico.

There's a lot of really cool plants that you can grow from say Australia and Africa.

And really amazing, cool stuff.

But it doesn't do anything to support the wildlife here.

My dad sells plants at the Bisbee farmer's market.

We were just thinking, "He's got cool plants."

"He should be selling them in Tucson."

And then it kind of snowballed.

And we decided we needed a retail space.

- [Petey] Katie's my youngest daughter.

And she says, "I want to come out and see you."

"And I want to, do you mind if I bring my boyfriend?"

And "Oh well, oh yeah!

We want to meet your boyfriend."

And Jared walks in the door.

I mean, I'd known him back, we'd done some horticulture conferences.

He was a speaker.

I was a speaker.

They started talking about doing the nursery.

I said, "Well, you're welcome to have this name."

I said, "Listen, this is the best part of this nursery, is the name and the slogan."

"So take it and run."

I like that name "Spade foot" of this this little creature that hides and comes out in a monsoon.

You know?

If I were to start a new nursery, I think I'd go with "Box Turtle" or something like that.

You know, something like that.

I'd go "Box Turtle Nursery".

You know?

- [Katy] We try and get out into nature as much as we can.

We're always excited to find new plants, and try and figure out how we can cultivate them if we can.

- [Jared] Because our nursery is informed a lot more by ecology than it is agriculture.

Our local ecology has influenced what we sell.

This is a plant we grow.

The Erythrina flabelliformis, or the Coral Bean.

And you find it in Arizona grown out of rock crevices.

They're one of the last things that come out of dormancy.

It's a tough sell sometimes, if you don't know what it is because it's dormant until like June or May.

And the blooms come first, and you get these sprays of the long red tubular flowers, which is the big selling point for this plant.

We don't just expect these plants to sell themselves.

We let people know, like, "This plant is a larval host for this butterfly", or "This plant has seeds that the finches love to eat", or "This plan actually improves the soil."

What we really want people to do is to think of their backyards as a piece of a whole ecology.

- [Buyer] I'm a design consultant.

Landscape design, I've been doing this for 30 years.

But I've learned more here in one year than I've learned all the school that I've gone to.

- [Buyer] Actually, I work at Roma Imports, and they come in and get lunch a lot.

And so I was like, "Wow, I should go check them out."

- [Buyer] I ordered some globemallow, some penstemon, for a more pollinator friendly space.

- [Katy] It definitely feels like it could be non-profit work where there's a lot of education.

I feel like that's the way that word's going to get out, is you start with one person and then they educate someone else.

I mean, we have what we call repeat offenders.

Where people are buying plants at least once a week.

And we're starting to worry if we need to, like, cut them off, or like start a group to help people slow down.

But we're in the same boat.

You know, we still, we own a nursery and we still go to plant sales and buy new plants.

- [Jared] We grow a lot of stuff from seed.

A lot of the plants that we're growing are not in cultivation.

But I also prefer to grow from seed for the genetic diversity.

We really look at what we're doing as a form of restoration.

And genetic diversity is a huge part of trying to restore the flora.

A lot of nurseries, they want everything to be consistent, and everything looks the same.

And we're sort of the opposite of that.

We want that diversity.

Rather than having some weird colonialist idea of a yard, I really want people to stop being so human centric and think about that there's all these other organisms that are responsible for our ability to be here.

The more people pay attention to their own backyard and it becomes a trend, the more impact we can have.

Because as these creatures are often migrating through our yards, they find that safe space.

They know how to find it.

We could learn a lot from them if we were just a little quieter and let them have some space.

- [Tom] The newest exhibition at MOCA in Tucson is unique.

There are only three pieces of art, but they take up the entire main gallery of the museum.

And the artists could only participate virtually because of the pandemic.

Pia Camil, who lives in Mexico City, uses fabric, textiles and personal artifacts to investigate the relationship of capitalism, consumption, and community, with interactive sculptures.

Here is "Pia Camil, Three Works".

(calm music softly playing) - [Laura] I really appreciate everybody coming out to see the show.

And it's been an interesting show to organize, because it's all been from a distance.

It's all been virtual, with Pia.

This large-scale work is called "Bara, Bara, Bara".

And it's been shown a few places around the world in really open, pristine, beautiful spaces like MOCA's.

The really interesting thing about our version of "Bara" is that we have this competing piece, this rug which the artists calls "The Autonomous Space Rug."

And so this piece has never been seen like this in such close proximity to another kind of architecturally responsive work.

- [Pia] The biggest was not being able to be there in person.

I'm usually very involved in my installations.

And fortunately we could do a bunch of things via video.

Sometimes it was difficult, cause I live in the country.

And as you can see, my connection is not ideal.

And so a lot of back and forth and also an incredible disposition from the team to try to get as close to the to the pieces as I envision it as possible.

You know?

- [Wylwyn] Every project is different.

So, like months or years in advance when we're planning the exhibitions, I start to get a general idea working with the curator and artist of what the scope of the work was going to be.

I think it's a good idea.

But there's only a few minor tweaks, and then all of the finals should be covered.

- [Wesley] Every install is different, but it all, they all require a lot of problem solving.

Maybe I'll loosen them.

They're really heavy to hoist up.

A lot of consideration of how to layer, not just the pieces themselves, but all of the many, many ropes that keep the pieces elevated.

- [Wylwyn] Lots of moving parts, lots of different components, and doing installations for the first time.

A specific to this building.

- [Pia] I would say the sort of the main work there is "Bara, Bara" which is this sort of massive installation.

Made of secondhand T-shirts that I buy in the markets in the outskirts of Mexico City.

Most of the goods that are sold in those markets are brought illegally into the country, because of high importation taxes.

Literally every single shirt that you see in "Bara, Bara" we check the tag and made sure that it was made in anywhere in Latin America.

And the fact that they're made in sweat shop environments by US companies in Latin America, sent to the US and brought back illegally that coming and going became an interesting story for me to engage in.

There's a story behind each of these T-shirts.

There's a person probably behind those T-shirts.

And I decided to include shirts from political agendas with like McCain, and Sarah Palin, and even Trump, along side messages of love, building strong girls.

Sort of narratives that are happening, when you start putting all this T-shirts together, and seeing T-shirts as a sort of emblem for contemporary individuality.

And what happens when you put that together, and you make sort of a social contemporary portrait.

- [Wesley] So the last few days have been spent installing this sort of quilt-like pattern with overstock carpet.

And now we are painting a mural on top of it.

- [Wylwyn] Keeping it flat would be the biggest challenge with the carpet.

We're actually on schedule.

I added some buffer time that I didn't tell everybody before, cause I knew there were going to be some challenges with the carpet.

- [Pia] It was interesting how we put it together.

Because obviously I have an interest in sort of using materials that are considered cast offs, or recycled, second hand.

The museum actually contacted a distributor that was willing to sell all the, you know, stuff that was sort of hanging around in the warehouse.

- [Wesley] A lot of it has been in storage for very long time, and misshapen.

We've literally bought all the double-sided carpet tape in Tucson.

So there's been a lot of Home Depot runs.

- [Pia] The added design that you see on top of the carpet was originally thought of because I wanted to find a way to make that interaction safe.

Considering, you know, COVID protocols.

Offering the space to the public seemed like a very important thing to do.

Whatever really needs to happen in this space.

I thought it would be interesting to leave that as a sort of open territory for the public.

- [Katy] Please do experience the work, see them from sides.

There's there's a lot to see even though the works are kind of singular and big.

So thank you so much again for coming.

We really appreciate it.

- [Pia] I think they did a wonderful job.

I'm like super happy.

I really want to go, and this is a show that really interested me because, for some reason, Tucson is a city I've always wanted to go.

So it's gonna, it's gonna happen eventually.

- [Tom] "Pia Camil, Three Works" is on exhibit at MOCA Tucson through September 19th.

For more information visit moca-tucson.org 16 years ago, what you're about to experience was imagined.

However, what was not clear then was when, and exactly how a spacecraft would collect dust and pebbles from the surface of an ancient asteroid more that 200 million miles from earth.

Last October, what was imagined 16 years ago happened.

Here is "OSIRIS-REx Touch And Go" - [NASA Controller] MSA on O-REx off.

O-REx is descending below 25 meters.

- Okay, we're getting really close.

And I want to remind you, it's the five meter crossing that's the really critical one - Yeah - [NASA Host] We're only a couple minutes away from that.

So the spacecraft has one key decision left to make.

It's calculating right now the probability that it's going to come down, either on a hazardous area as we defined on that hazard map or in a safe area.

All my senses are on that call out right now.

I really want to hear that we are go for tags.

So that's just a couple minutes away.

So you can see here that this is a pretty daunting terrain that we're coming down here.

There's giant boulders all around the Nightingale site.

Even some large rocks inside the crater that we do not think the spacecraft would survive, at least with the ability to return back to earth if it made contact.

- [NASA Controller] Attitude control system has transitioned to touch and go mode.

- [NASA Host] All right!

Spacecrafts getting ready to make contact with the asteroid surface here.

(calm music plays) - [Announcer] 10 seconds, 9, 8, 7, 6, five, four, three, two, one.

And liftoff of OSIRIS-REx!

It's seven year mission to boldly go to the asteroid Bennu and back.

- [Dante] OSIRIS-REx is a NASA mission to send robotic spacecraft out to a near earth asteroids named Bennu, map that asteroid in great detail to select a site on the surface, and send the spacecraft down to collect a sample of material.

We're then going to bring that sample back to the earth, to analyze in our laboratories.

We're going to an asteroid that dates from the formation of our solar system.

Literally the oldest rocks in our planetary system, older than the earth.

And represents the building blocks of our planets.

And we're really going after the biggest questions we asked ourselves as a species precisely, "Where did we come from?"

and "Are we alone in the universe?"

We want to understand why earth is such a special place.

Why it has this wonderful hydrologic system that enabled the origin of life.

And we also want to know, "Where are we going?"

"What is our future?"

And we look to the stars and we look to destinations that we can explore.

And these asteroids are very accessible, and they potentially hold a lot of resources.

And they also represent a significant natural disaster.

And we would like to be able to prevent that.

We're the first species on earth that could actually stop an asteroid from hitting.

And I think it's worth some of our effort to mitigate that risk.

- [Dante] And just to kind of show you this is the orbit of OSIRIS-Rex.

When we were designing the Osiris-Rex spacecraft.

We performed an extensive astronomical campaign to characterize the target.

And when we got to Bennu, we actually saw we did a pretty good job.

We really did see this interesting spinning top shape that looks like it's bulging at the equator.

But what we didn't get right, and it was a big oops, was it was rough, and rugged, and rocky.

And at first glance, there was nowhere that looked like we could collect a sample from.

And so I knew right away, we were in for a challenge, that we were going to have to roll up our sleeves, and we had some work to do in order to figure out how we're going to get a sample off the surface of this asteroid.

So we very quickly build up a three-dimensional topographic map of the entire asteroid surface.

And we found some flat areas.

And so we decided we were going to design a trajectory.

The spacecraft's going to fly over a known area of the asteroid surface.

And then it gets to the point where it's going to start going down to the surface.

We call it the checkpoint.

And then it's going to have to match the speed that the asteroid is rotating.

And we call it the match point.

So the spacecraft has to calculate it's own maneuvers and get it into the target area we call the "Nightingale Crater" as our sample site.

And then even then, there's still some things inside that crater that look hazardous.

We don't want to land on the big rocks.

And then there's the final unknown about what's going to happen when the spacecraft makes contact with the asteroid surface.

And to me, the scariest moment is going to be during that contact.

The spacecraft could tip over, and if we lose signal everybody's going to be holding their breath.

(excited crosstalk) - [NASA Team Member] So I'm really excited.

This is a long time coming.

I thought I would feel more nervous but I'm actually feeling great.

Just feeling really stoked for today and what we're about to do.

- [NASA Team Member] I am very excited about finally reaching this milestone in the project.

Sure, I have some nerves.

Maybe I haven't been sleeping as well as I could be.

But I am just overwhelmingly confident in this team.

But we've also never actually touched the surface of an asteroid.

That's something new and you just never know what's going to happen.

- [NASA Team Member] I mean, we've done everything we can do to this point, and we just have to see how it unfolds.

It's the team that makes this happen, not any one individual.

And I think that's probably been one of the best lessons I've learned from this project.

- [NASA Team Member] So last night was probably the first night in many months where I actually started having kind of stress dreams.

It's an important day.

It's, you know, we've been leading up to this since 2004.

And there's a lot on the line today.

- Earlier we departed our orbit around the asteroid.

So we're flying over the sunlit side of the asteroid.

The spacecraft has deployed it's robotic TAGs and sampling arm.

So the arm is ready in position to collect that sample.

Once we fire the thrusters for the checkpoint maneuver, we're actually going to start descending down towards the asteroid's surface.

So this means we're going to be on our way to make contact.

- [NASA Controller] O-REX MSA on O-REX op.

Checkpoint burn has completed.

(applause) - Okay.

We're heading down towards the asteroid surface at this point.

So we've got one more firing of thrusters with the spacecraft to get us lined up for the sample acquisition event.

We call that the match point.

- Once it gets part match point, it's going to be telling us, "How likely am I to contact a hazard?"

And we want that to be zero.

But it may not be, especially early on.

It could be like, "There's a 30% chance I'm going to contact a hazard."

So you're kind of trending this hazard calculation all the way down to five meters before the surface.

It's that final decision on the spacecraft where we know we've committed and this is it.

And we're going in to hit the surface and hopefully get that sample.

- We've worked hard to get to this point.

The best times are ahead of us.

This represents the hopes, and dreams, hard work, blood, sweat, and tears.

- [NASA Controller] O-REx has processed it's next message.

Position uncertainty is 0.5 meters.

(cheers and applause) Predicted tag lateral offset is 1.7 meters.

Hazard probability is 0%.

OSIRIS-REx has descended below the five meter mark.

The hazard map is go for TAG.

(cheering) TAG expected in 60 seconds - [NASA Host] We're going in!

- [NASA Host] We're going in!

- [NASA Team Member] And we have touched down!

(cheering and applause) (crying) On my god.

- [NASA Controller] Touchdown declared.

Sampling is in progress.

O-REx MSA on O-Rex op.

Sample collection is complete.

And the faculty burn has executed.

- [NASA Host] Alright, we're on our way back!

(cheering and laughing) I'm a little overwhelmed right now, I'll have to say it's been pretty intense several minutes here.

I can tell you that everything went just exactly perfect.

Which is kind of the hallmark of this team.

We have consistently beaten expectations over and over again.

We have overcome the amazing challenges that this asteroid has thrown at us.

And the spacecraft appears to have operated flawlessly.

- [NASA Team Member] I think I'm just in shock at how well it went.

Just like relief.

- Oh, I'm absolutely elated.

So excited.

So happy.

- I'm feeling so incredibly relieved.

- Woo-hoo!

We did it!

Yes.

So many years all culminates in, what did he say?

"4.5 seconds of touchdown."

Then just looking forward to getting those images tonight.

After that I'll be able to sleep for a while.

So, go O-Rex!

(calm electric guitar music plays) - [Dante] Well, I think one of the greatest outcomes of space exploration is the realization of how fragile and how rare the earth is.

And how special a place it.

I mean, how lucky we are to be here.

And we really need to work hard to take care of it, and to take care of each other, and to work together to solve the problems that we all face.

Because we can do that.

Humans can do amazing things when they come together with a common vision.

And OSIRIS-REx is just one small example of that.

So the samples from OSIRIS-REx will land on earth in September of 2023.

And we're particularly looking for the building blocks of life.

I think it'll be a pretty emotional moment because I will, at that point, have dedicated well over 16 years of my life to getting to that point.

So I think I might relax a little bit and say, "Okay, we did something that was incredibly hard.

We did it incredibly well, And now it's time to celebrate."

- [Tom] On April 7th.

OSIRIS-REx got one last close-up of asteroid Bennu, as the spacecraft performed a final fly over to capture these images of the asteroid surface.

This week it begins the two year journey back to earth with its sample return capsule containing the rocks and dust collected from Bennu.

The spacecraft will jettison the capsule, which will travel through the Earth's atmosphere and land under parachutes at the Utah test and training range on September 24th, 2023.

Thank you for joining us here on "Arizona Illustrated".

I'm Tom McNamara and we'll see you next week.

(calming guitar music plays)