NASA mission finds key ingredients for life in asteroid samples

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What just happened? NASA’s OSIRIS-REx mission has unveiled discoveries from the analysis of samples collected from asteroid Bennu that shed new light on the potential origins of life in our solar system. The findings, published in Nature and Nature Astronomy, reveal the presence of key molecular building blocks for life and evidence of an ancient aqueous environment.

The sample analysis detected 14 out of the 20 amino acids used by life on Earth to create proteins, as well as all five nucleobases essential for genetic information storage and transmission. Additionally, scientists found an unexpectedly high concentration of ammonia – approximately 100 times greater than natural levels in Earth’s soils.

“NASA’s OSIRIS-REx mission already is rewriting the textbook on what we understand about the beginnings of our solar system,” said Nicky Fox, associate administrator of NASA’s Science Mission Directorate. “Asteroids provide a time capsule into our home planet’s history, and Bennu’s samples are pivotal in our understanding of what ingredients in our solar system existed before life started on Earth.”

The research team also identified traces of 11 minerals associated with salt deposits formed through water evaporation, suggesting a history of brine environments on Bennu or its parent body. This discovery provides insights into the potential for life-supporting conditions in the early solar system.

“The clues we’re looking for are so minuscule and so easily destroyed or altered from exposure to Earth’s environment,” Danny Glavin, a senior sample scientist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, said. “That’s why some of these new discoveries would not be possible without a sample-return mission, meticulous contamination-control measures, and careful curation and storage of this precious material from Bennu.”

While these findings do not provide direct evidence of life, they suggest that the necessary conditions for life’s emergence were widespread across the early solar system. This increases the possibility that life could have formed on other planets and moons.

“Our odds of finding life elsewhere are increasing,” Glavin told the New York Times.

The Bennu samples also present an intriguing puzzle regarding the chirality of amino acids. Unlike life on Earth, which predominantly uses left-handed amino acids, the Bennu samples contain an equal mixture of both left- and right-handed varieties. This raises questions about how and why life on Earth “turned left” in its amino acid preference.

NASA launched the OSIRIS-REx mission to asteroid Bennu in 2016 to gain insights into the early solar system’s formation. Bennu, like other asteroids, is believed to contain primordial materials from the solar system’s birth approximately 4.5 billion years ago.

The mission’s primary objective was to collect and return a pristine sample from Bennu’s surface, which could provide unaltered evidence of the solar system’s original ingredients. This sample was expected to offer more accurate information than meteorites, which undergo significant changes during their passage through Earth’s atmosphere and while on the ground. OSIRIS-REx successfully collected a sample from Bennu on October 20, 2020, and returned it to Earth on September 24, 2023.