What The Bennu Samples Are Telling Us About Life's Origins
NASA's OSIRIS-REx mission successfully returned samples from the asteroid Bennu, revealing essential chemical building blocks for life. These findings suggest that asteroids may have delivered the raw materials for life to early Earth.
Why it matters
Understanding the origins of life on Earth provides critical insights into our biological history and the potential for life elsewhere in the universe.
What The Bennu Samples Are Telling Us About Life's Origins A pinch of asteroid dust from Bennu turned out to hold the chemical starter kit for life. NASA's OSIRIS-REx scooped it up and dropped it in Utah in 2023. Inside were amino acids that build proteins and nucleobases that spell out DNA and RNA. Scientists even pulled out ribose and glucose, the sugars that make RNA work. Those ingredients formed in space before Earth existed. That points to asteroids like Bennu delivering life's raw materials to a young planet.
The article reports on scientific findings from a NASA mission using factual, neutral language.
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