Asteroid Bennu seems to have come from a long-lost world on the fringes of the solar system, where saltwater pooled and dried over thousands of years and life’s basic ingredients were widespread.

Bennu’s parent body formed 4.5 billion years ago and once contained pockets of liquid water. As the water evaporated, brines ...

This combination of rock, water and organics is one reason OSIRIS-REx chose to sample the organic-rich asteroid Bennu, where ...

This combination of rock, water and organics is one reason OSIRIS-REx chose to sample the organic-rich asteroid Bennu, where water and organic compounds essential to the origin of life could be found.

Bennu has long intrigued researchers due to its near-Earth orbit and carbon-rich composition. Scientists theorized that the asteroid contained traces of water and organic molecules and that ...

Bennu is actually a broken-off chunk of a larger asteroid that is about 4.5 billion years old—roughly the same age as our solar system. That asteroid probably contained pockets of liquid water ...

They’re the building rocks of life. Analysis of debris from the nearly 5 billion-year-old asteroid Bennu suggests the ingredients to life on Earth were present in the early days of our solar ...

The liquid water would have been present on Bennu’s parent during the dawn of the Solar System, in the first few million years after the planets began to form. Heat generated by the radioactive decay ...

Scientists have detected organic compounds and minerals necessary for life in the samples collected by the OSIRIS-REx mission from a near-Earth asteroid named Bennu.

In 2023, NASA’s OSIRIS-REx mission returned from space with a sample of an asteroid named Bennu and scientists got to dive into a tale of rock, ice and water that hints at how life could have ...

Scientists discovered evidence of water on Bennu back in 2018, and soon after retrieval of the sample, NASA confirmed Bennu was rich in carbon. But now we know just how rich it really was.

Scientists have detected organic compounds and minerals necessary for life in the samples collected by the OSIRIS-REx mission from a near-Earth asteroid named Bennu.