NASA finds key molecules for life in OSIRIS-REx asteroid samples. Here's what that means
There are 20 amino acids that create the proteins required for life on our planet — and scientists have now found exactly 14 of them on an asteroid millions of miles away. The asteroid in question, named Bennu, was the focus of a very dreamy NASA mission called OSIRIS-REx that launched in 2016.
Analysis of OSIRIS-REx Sample Shows Asteroid Bennu Has Ingredients for Life
Bennu, it seems, was born of a salty planetoid rife with the ingredients for life. Bennu as it exists today is essentially a rubble pile floating through space, the remains of an ancient collision between two larger objects.
Scientists find building blocks of life in OSIRIS-REx...
Scientists from NASA’s OSIRIS-REx asteroid sample return mission recently delivered remarkable findings about asteroid
Asteroid samples hint at how life formed on Earth, researchers say
When asteroids like Bennu hit the young Earth, they could have provided a complete package of complex molecules and the ingredients essential to life, such as water, phosphate and ammonia. Together, these components could have seeded Earth’s initially barren landscape to produce a habitable world.
Scientists Just Found DNA’s Building Blocks in Asteroid Bennu – Could This Explain Life’s Origins?
Japanese scientists detected all five nucleobases — building blocks of DNA and RNA — in samples returned from asteroid Bennu by NASA’s OSIRIS-REx mission. NASA’s OSIRIS-REx mission brought back 121.6 grams of asteroid Bennu,
Asteroid had 'all the stuff' to make life, OSIRIS-REx samples reveal
Bennu samples brought back by a University of Arizona-led space mission contain the key ingredients of life and signs of the stew needed to mix them.
Asteroid Bennu contains the 'seeds of life,' OSIRIS-REx samples reveal
Scientists have found all five nucelobases alongisde minerals essential for life as we know it on the potentially hazardous asteroid Bennu.
Scientists find life’s ‘building blocks’ in asteroid Bennu samples
The meteor fragments returned by OSIRIS-REx shed light on the entwined history of water and the chemical ingredients of life in the solar system.
NASA scientists find 'ingredients for life' in asteroid sample
Samples of asteroid Bennu contain molecules that suggest the "conditions necessary for life" were widespread across the early solar system, according to NASA.
Bennu Asteroid Contains Material Needed for Life, NASA Mission Finds
The discovery supports the theory that asteroids seeded life on Earth.
Building blocks of life discovered on asteroid Bennu
The building blocks for organic matter have been discovered on the asteroid Bennu, as deatiled in a new study in the journal Nature Astronomy. The research gives new insight into how life originated on Earth and where we might find it elsewhere in the universe.
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 ...
New analysis of asteroid dust reveals evidence of salty water in the early Solar System
Two new studies show a briny, carbon-rich environment on the parent body of the Bennu asteroid was suitable for assembling ...
New Atlas1d
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 ...