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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

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, on our planet, are key to life, as well as a history of saltwater that could have served as the “broth” for these compounds to interact and combine. 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. “The clues we’re looking for are so minuscule and so easily destroyed or altered from exposure to Earth’s environment,” said Danny Glavin, a senior sample scientist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, and co-lead author of the Nature Astronomy paper.

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