A pristine asteroid sample is now helping scientists decode the origins of life
In short: NASA’s OSIRIS-REx mission returned a pristine sample from asteroid Bennu in 2023, now being studied at the Natural History Museum. These space-borne materials contain the fundamental chemical building blocks of life, offering a rare, uncontaminated time capsule that reveals how our early solar system may have seeded Earth.
The Bennu sample, delivered to Earth by the OSIRIS-REx spacecraft in 2023, provides a unique look at the raw materials present before life emerged on our planet. Researchers from institutions including the Natural History Museum in London and the Smithsonian have identified key biological ingredients, such as 14 of the 20 amino acids used to build proteins and all five nucleobases essential for DNA and RNA. The presence of ammonia and formaldehyde further suggests that the right conditions for complex molecular synthesis were present in the early solar system.
Beyond organic molecules, the sample contains evidence of an ancient, water-rich environment. Scientists identified 11 minerals, including trona, halite, and sylvite, which form as saltwater evaporates over thousands of years. This discovery of a complete evaporation process in an extraterrestrial rock is unprecedented. These minerals suggest that the asteroid Bennu was once an aqueously altered body, providing a salty broth where chemical compounds could interact and combine, similar to environments suspected on Saturn’s moon Enceladus or the dwarf planet Ceres.
Despite these breakthroughs, the samples present new mysteries. While life on Earth exclusively utilizes left-handed amino acids, the Bennu samples contain an equal mixture of both left- and right-handed versions. This indicates that early Earth might have started with a similar racemic mixture, leaving the question of why terrestrial life eventually favored one orientation over the other as an open scientific puzzle. By studying these pristine materials, scientists hope to understand why the solar system appears so chemically primed for life, yet remains seemingly empty of it beyond our own world.
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Sources
- Summary by Intellect · source: Pristine asteroid sample lands at the Natural History Museum
- Also: NASA’s Asteroid Bennu Sample Reveals Mix of Life’s Ingredients - NASA
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