Scientists from NASA’s OSIRIS-REx asteroid sample return mission recently delivered remarkable findings about asteroid 101955 Bennu ... However, the amino acid samples from Bennu show an even ...

The 120 g of material came from the near-Earth asteroid 101955 Bennu, which OSIRIS-REx visited in 2020 ... deepening the mystery of why life only uses “left-handed” amino acids. Amino acid molecules ...

A big question in the origin of life on Earth is why it is based solely on "left-handed" amino acids. Studies on asteroid Bennu's chemical ... version of an amino acid from a meteorite.

In 2018, NASA’s OSIRIS-REx mission reached asteroid 101955 Bennu. Two years later, the spacecraft snagged a sample of its surface, which has since been returned to Earth. Now, astronomers are ...

NASA’s OSIRIS-REx mission returned 121.6 grams of sample from asteroid (101955) Bennu in September 2023 ... and nicotinic acid (vitamin B 3). “In previous research, uracil and nicotinic ...

The researchers boiled rocks and dust from Bennu in water and acid to extract organic compounds, then used mass spectrometry to identify the molecules, including 14 of the 20 amino acids that life ...

Rock and dust samples retrieved by NASA from the asteroid Bennu exhibit some of the chemical building blocks of life, according to research that provides some of the best evidence to date that such ...

Scientists discovered thousands of organic molecular compounds in the Bennu samples, including abundant mineral salts, amino acids, nitrogen in the form of ammonia, and all five bases present in ...

and nicotinic acid (vitamin B3). In addition to suggesting that life could exist elsewhere in the universe, the molecules found on Bennu raise provocative questions about the origins of life on Earth.

Samples contain all five nucleobases of DNA and RNA, supporting theory that asteroids may have seeded Earth with life's essential ingredients. NASA's Bennu asteroid samples reveal building blocks ...