The odds of alien life just increased, NASA says after discovering DNA ingredients on an asteroid
NASA scientists found amino acids, key minerals, and nucleobases for DNA in samples from the OSIRIS-REx asteroid mission. It's a win for alien life.
NASA brought back samples from asteroid Bennu. They revealed clues about the possible origins of life.
A NASA spacecraft has returned asteroid samples that hold not only the pristine building blocks for life but also the salty remains of an ancient water world.
Asteroid samples hint at how life formed on Earth, researchers say
When asteroids like Bennu hit the young Earth, they could have provided a complete package of complex molecules and the ingredients essential to life, such as water, phosphate and ammonia. Together, these components could have seeded Earth’s initially barren landscape to produce a habitable world.
Material necessary for life on Earth may have been delivered by asteroids like Bennu
Some amino acids can be built in two ways that mirror each other, like a pair of right and left hands. Life on Earth uses the left-handed variety of these amino acids. Scientists have previously found left-handed amino acids in similar meteorites that have fallen to Earth and so presumed that the Bennu sample would show the same.
Scientists Discover Traces of Salt Water and Building Blocks of Life in NASA’s Samples From the Asteroid Bennu
Two new papers describe hints to a brine-filled environment on the 4.5-billion-year-old space rock and the presence of amino acids, offering clues to how early Earth got its ingredients for life
NASA finds key molecules for life in OSIRIS-REx asteroid samples. Here's what that means
There are 20 amino acids that create the proteins required for life on our planet — and scientists have now found exactly 14 of them on an asteroid millions of miles away. The asteroid in question, named Bennu, was the focus of a very dreamy NASA mission called OSIRIS-REx that launched in 2016.
Building blocks of life identified in sample collected from asteroid Bennu
This artist’s concept shows NASA’s OSIRIS-REx spacecraft descending towards asteroid Bennu to collect a sample of the asteroid’s surface. NASA/Goddard/University of Arizona Scientists studying the sample collected in 2023 from asteroid Bennu have announced a dramatic finding: they have identified the key building blocks of life within the sample.
Scientists find life-friendly molecules in NASA’s asteroid samples
Molecules friendly to life have been found in samples of the asteroid Bennu, which NASA collected with a robotic probe five years ago.
Asteroid Bennu Samples Contain Building Blocks of Life
Samples of Bennu were brought back to Earth by NASA’s OSIRIS-REx spacecraft in 2023. Now, a pair of newly published papers reveal that the samples contain precursors to life that formed in a watery environment—a watery environment very similar to the one that prevailed on Earth before life emerged up to four billion years ago.
Life's 'basic building blocks' found in asteroid samples
Pristine samples of the asteroid Bennu transported to Earth contain the "basic building blocks" for life, shedding new light on the perennial question of how life began on our planet.
NASA finds ‘key to life’ in Bennu asteroid samples
Rock and dust samples from the Bennu asteroid contain molecules that are the "key to life" on Earth, NASA officials announced on Wednesday.
Scientists find a 'next step on a pathway to life' in space
Samples of organic matter returned from the asteroid Bennu support the theory that asteroids could have brought the building ...
Ingredients to life on Earth discovered on distant asteroid for first time
Analysis of debris from the nearly 5 billion-year-old asteroid Bennu suggests the ingredients to life on Earth were present ...