An Asteroid Sample Just Changed What We Know About Life in Our Solar System
The OSIRIS-REx mission returned to the sample to Earth in September of 2023, and these studies show that it contains amino acids, nucleobases, and minerals known as evaporites—all elements of life’s building blocks.
NASA brought back samples from asteroid Bennu. They revealed clues about the possible origins of life.
A NASA spacecraft has returned asteroid samples that hold not only the pristine building blocks for life but also the salty remains of an ancient water world.
Bennu Asteroid Contains Material Needed for Life, NASA Mission Finds
This mineral-rich asteroid might have carried the seeds of life. Planetary scientists have discovered organic matter essential to life in dust and rock retrieved from an asteroid known as Bennu. The finding supports the theory that near-Earth asteroids,
NASA Uncovers Life’s Building Blocks in Asteroid Bennu’s Pristine Sample
NASA’s OSIRIS-REx mission delivered samples from asteroid Bennu, revealing crucial molecules linked to life, including amino acids and nucleobases found in DNA and RNA. The presence of ammonia and formaldehyde suggests conditions ripe for forming complex molecules in space.
The Asteroid Bennu Has All the Building Blocks of Life
The asteroid Bennu contains all the materials needed for life. This backs up an old hypothesis that the building blocks of life came to Earth on an asteroid.
Building blocks of life identified in sample collected from asteroid Bennu
This artist’s concept shows NASA’s OSIRIS-REx spacecraft descending towards asteroid Bennu to collect a sample of the asteroid’s surface. NASA/Goddard/University of Arizona Scientists studying the sample collected in 2023 from asteroid Bennu have announced a dramatic finding: they have identified the key building blocks of life within the sample.
Asteroid Bennu Samples Contain Building Blocks of Life
Samples of Bennu were brought back to Earth by NASA’s OSIRIS-REx spacecraft in 2023. Now, a pair of newly published papers reveal that the samples contain precursors to life that formed in a watery environment—a watery environment very similar to the one that prevailed on Earth before life emerged up to four billion years ago.
Lurking inside an asteroid: life’s ingredients
Scientists studying samples that NASA collected from the asteroid Bennu found a wide assortment of organic molecules that shed light on how life arose.
NASA finds key ingredients of life in asteroid samples
Scientists reported this week that asteroid samples taken from a distant asteroid known as Bennu were found to contain key organic molecules necessary to sustain life. CBS News space consultant Bill Harwood has more.
Analysis of OSIRIS-REx Sample Shows Asteroid Bennu Has Ingredients for Life
NASA's OSIRIS-REx mission successfully returned a generous chunk of the asteroid Bennu to Earth in 2023, and scientists have been analyzing it ever since. International scientific teams have published a pair of studies this week highlighting the incredible assortment of materials found in the sample.
Asteroid Bennu Once Had 'Broth' of Life's Ingredients
Studies of rock and dust from asteroid Bennu delivered to Earth by NASA’s OSIRIS-REx (Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification and Security–Regolith Explorer) spacecraft h
NASA scientists want to solve a mystery: Why did life "turn left?"
When NASA launched a spacecraft to an asteroid, scientists patiently waited for their chance to look at bits of the space ...
Huge leap in search for aliens after ‘building blocks for LIFE’ found on ancient asteroid Bennu from lost watery world
HUMANS have come a step closer to finding aliens after the “building blocks for life” were discovered by scientists on an ...
PBS2d
The Bennu asteroid reveals clues to how the building blocks of life on Earth may have been seeded
Nearly 60 years later, NASA’s OSIRIS-REx mission returned from space with a sample of an asteroid named Bennu, similar to the one that rained rocks over Revelstoke. Our research team has ...
New Atlas3d
Asteroid Bennu came from a distant, lost world of salty ponds
Asteroid Bennu seems to have come from a long-lost world on the fringes of the solar system, where saltwater pooled and dried ...