NASA's OSIRIS-REx mission delivered samples from asteroid Bennu to Earth in 2023. Analysis of these samples revealed molecules essential for life on Earth, including amino acids and nucleobases, as well as evidence of ancient saltwater environments. These findings suggest that the conditions necessary for the emergence of life were widespread in the early solar system, increasing the odds of life forming on other planets and moons.
In this video frame, Jason Dworkin holds up a vial that contains part of the sample from asteroid Bennu delivered to Earth by NASA’s OSIRIS-REx mission in 2023. Dworkin is the mission’s project scientist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland.
In research papers published Wednesday in the journals Nature and Nature Astronomy, scientists from NASA and other institutions shared results of the first in-depth analyses of the minerals and molecules in the Bennu samples, which OSIRIS-REx delivered to Earth in 2023. These building blocks for life detected in the Bennu samples have been found before in extraterrestrial rocks. However, identifying them in a pristine sample collected in space supports the idea that objects that formed far from the Sun could have been an important source of the raw precursor ingredients for life throughout the solar system.
Ranging from calcite to halite and sylvite, scientists identified traces of 11 minerals in the Bennu sample that form as water containing dissolved salts evaporates over long periods of time, leaving behind the salts as solid crystals. “These papers really go hand in hand in trying to explain how life’s ingredients actually came together to make what we see on this aqueously altered asteroid,” said McCoy.
Space Exploration ASTEROID BENNU LIFE MOLECULES WATER
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