Nasas asteroid bennu -test reveals blend of life’s ingredients

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Studies of stone and dust from asteroid Bennu delivered to the ground by NASA’s osiris-rex (origin, spectral interpretation, resource identification and security-regolit discoveries) spacecraft has revealed molecules that on our planet are key to life as well as a story of Salt water that could have served as a “broth” for these connections to interact and combine.

The results do not show evidence of life itself, but they suggest that the conditions needed for the emergence of life were widespread across the early solar system, which increased the odds that life could have formed on other planets and moons.

“NASA’s Osiris-Rex Mission is already rewriting the textbook about what we understand about the beginning of our solar system,” said Nicky Fox, associate administrator, Science Mission Directorate in the NASA headquarters in Washington. “Asteroids give a time capsule into the history of our home plan, and Bennus samples are central to our understanding of what ingredients in our solar system existed before life started on earth.”

In research articles published Wednesday in the Journals Nature and Nature Astronomy, researchers from NASA and other institutions shared results of the first in-depth analyzes of minerals and molecules in the Bennu samples, which Osiris-Rex delivered to Earth in 2023.

Detailed in Nature Astronomy Paper was among the most compelling detections amino acids – 14 of the 20 that life on Earth uses to produce proteins – and all five nucleobases that life on Earth uses to store and transmit genetic instructions into more complex soil biomolecules , such as DNA and RNA, including how to arrange amino acids in proteins.

Researchers also described unusually high occurrences of ammonia in Bennu samples. Ammonia is important for biology because it can respond with formaldehyde, which was also detected in the samples, to form complex molecules, such as amino acids – considering the right conditions. When amino acids are connected in long chains, they produce proteins that continue to operate almost any biological function.

These building blocks of life, detected in the Bennu tests, have been found before in extraterrestrial cliffs. However, identifying them in a pristine sample that is collected in the room 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.

“The clues we are looking for are so minuscule and so easily destroyed or changed from exposure to the Earth’s environment,” said Danny Glavin, a senior trial researcher at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland and Co-Lead author to Nature astronomy paper. “Therefore, some of these new discoveries would not be possible without a sample-return mission, careful pollution control measures and careful curation and storage of this precious material from Bennu.”

While Glavin’s team analyzed the Bennu tests for hints of life-related connections, their colleagues, led by Tim McCoy, curator of meteorites at Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History in Washington, and Sara Russell, a cosmic mineralogist at the Natural History Museum in London, looked for clues to the environment that these molecules would have formed. Reporting in the journal NatureResearchers also describe evidence of an old environment that is suitable for starting the chemistry of life.

Researchers ranging from Kalsit to Halit and Sylvite identified traces of 11 minerals in the Bennu sample formed as water containing dissolved salts evaporates for long periods, leaving salts as solid crystals.

Similar salt water has been detected or proposed across the solar system, including on the Dwarf Planet Ceres and Saturns Moon Enceladus.

Although researchers have previously discovered several evaporation in meteorites that fall to the Earth’s surface, they have never seen a complete set that preserves an evaporation process that could have lasted thousands of years or more. Some minerals found in Bennu, such as Trona, were discovered for the first time in extraterrestrial samples.

“These papers really go hand in hand in trying to explain how Life’s ingredients actually met to do what we look at this aqueous changed asteroid,” McCoy said.

For all the answers that the Bennu test has asked, there are still more questions. Many amino acids can be created in two mirror image versions, such as a pair of left and right hands. Life on Earth produces almost exclusively the left-handed variety, but the Bennu samples contain a straight mixture of both. This means that on the early soil, amino acids can also have started in a straight mixture. The reason why life “turned to the left” instead of the right remains a mystery.

“Osiris-Rex has been a very successful mission,” said Jason Dworkin, Osiris-Rex project scientist at NASA Goddard and co-lead writer at Nature Astronomy Paper. “Data from Osiris-Rex adds large brushes to a picture of a solar system that is teeming with the potential of life. Why so far we only see life on Earth and not elsewhere, it is the really tempting question. “

NASA Goddard provided overall mission management, system technology and security and mission protection for Osiris-Rex. Dante Lauretta of the University of Arizona, Tucson, is the most important investigator. The university leads the science team and the mission’s scientific observation planning and data processing. Lockheed Martin Space in Littleton, Colorado, built the spacecraft and provided aircraft operations. NASA Goddard and Kinetx Aerospace were responsible for navigating the Osiris-Rex space vessel. Curation for Osiris-Rex takes place at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston. International partnerships on this mission include Osiris-Rex Laser Altimeter Instrument from CSA (Canadian Space Agency) and Asteroid Sample Science Collaboration with Jaxa’s (Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency) Hayabusa2 Mission. Osiris-Rex is the third mission in NASA’s new Frontiers program managed by the Agency’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, to the Agency’s Directorate of Science in Washington.

For more information about the Osiris-Rex mission, visit:

Karen Fox / Molly Wasser
Headquarters, Washington
202-358-1600
[email protected] / [email protected]

Rani Gran
Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Maryland
301-286-2483
[email protected]