Scientists analyzing dust and pebbles from asteroid Bennu have found sodium-rich minerals, amino acids, and nitrogen, suggesting that asteroids may have delivered the ingredients for life to Earth and that these ingredients were interacting with water early in our planet's history.
hold not only the pristine building blocks for life but also the salty remains of an ancient water world , scientists reported Wednesday.
NASA's Osiris-Rex spacecraft returned 122 grams of dust and pebbles from the near-Earth asteroid Bennu, delivering the sample canister to the Utah desert in 2023 before swooping off after another space rock. It remains the biggest cosmic haul from beyond the moon. The two previous asteroid sample missions, by Japan, yielded considerably less material.
“This discovery was only possible by analyzing samples that were collected directly from the asteroid then carefully preserved back on Earth," the Institute of Science Tokyo’s Yasuhito Sekine, who was not involved in the studies, said in an accompanying editorial.Combining the ingredients of life with an environment of sodium-rich salt water, or brines, “that’s really the pathway to life,” said McCoy, the National Museum of Natural History's curator of meteorites.
ASTEROIDS LIFE ORIGINS WATER WORLD AMINO ACIDS SPACE EXPLORATION
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