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.
NASA’s Historic Asteroid Sample Holds Clues to Life’s Origins
The discovery is a capstone achievement for NASA, which went to great lengths to secure and deliver asteroid samples from asteroid Bennu in 2020.
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.
Historic asteroid sample reveals the ‘building blocks of life are in fact extraterrestrial in origin,’ scientists say
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.
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.
Scientists find traces of life’s building blocks in historic asteroid samples
It took a while for scientists to gain access to the samples that NASA’s OSIRIS-REx mission took from the asteroid Bennu, but the wait is proving to be worth it. A new study published January 29 in Nature describes an unexpected discovery in the material delivered by OSIRIS-REx: residues of compounds left over by the evaporation of liquid water.
Building blocks of life found in samples from asteroid Bennu
Rock and dust samples retrieved by NASA from the asteroid Bennu exhibit some of the chemical building blocks of life, according to research that provides some of the best evidence to date that such space rocks may have seeded early Earth with the raw ingredients that fostered the emergence of living organisms.
Asteroid contains building blocks of life, say scientists
Bennu contains minerals and thousands of organic molecules, including the chemical components that make up DNA.
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Life's 'basic building blocks' found in asteroid samples
Pristine samples of the asteroid Bennu transported to Earth contain the "basic building blocks" for life, shedding new light on the perennial question of how life began on our planet.
Bennu asteroid reveals its contents to scientists − and clues to how the building blocks of life on Earth may have been seeded
A layer of ice saved them from the depths and allowed scientists a peek into the birth of the solar system. Nearly 60 years later, NASA’s OSIRIS-REx mission returned from space with a sample of an asteroid named Bennu,
NASA's Asteroid Bennu Sample Reveals Mix 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 have revealed molecules that,
Scientists find a 'next step on a pathway to life' in space
Samples of organic matter returned from the asteroid Bennu support the theory that asteroids could have brought the building ...
The odds of alien life just increased, NASA says after discovering DNA ingredients on an asteroid
NASA scientists found amino acids, key minerals, and nucleobases for DNA in samples from the OSIRIS-REx asteroid mission.
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Origin of Life News
2024 — Few questions have captivated humankind more than the origin of life on Earth. How did the first living cells come to exist? How did these early protocells develop the structural ...