On behalf of the Natural History Museum, Russell was part of the team which arranged the acquisition of the Ivuna meteorite in 2008. In 2009 she published the book Meteorite with Caroline Smith and Gretchen Benedix. She won the Geological Society of London Bigsby Medal in 2010. In 2011 Russell took part in an exhibition at the Royal Observatory, Greenwich. She is a science team member of OSIRIS-REx. She was the initial point of contact in the process by which the Tissint meteorite came to be acquired by the Natural History Museum in 2012. In 2014 she studied Moon rocks brought back by the Apollo Astronauts, finding that the lunar crust did not form from a common source.