Bennu, Asteroid

An Asteroid Sample Just Changed What We Know About Life in Our Solar System
The OSIRIS-REx mission returned to the sample to Earth in September of 2023, and these studies show that it contains amino acids, nucleobases, and minerals known as evaporites—all elements of life’s building blocks.
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.
The Asteroid Bennu Has All the Building Blocks of Life
The asteroid Bennu contains all the materials needed for life. This backs up an old hypothesis that the building blocks of life came to Earth on an asteroid.
Bennu Asteroid Contains Material Needed for Life, NASA Mission Finds
This mineral-rich asteroid might have carried the seeds of life. Planetary scientists have discovered organic matter essential to life in dust and rock retrieved from an asteroid known as Bennu. The finding supports the theory that near-Earth asteroids,
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.
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.
Surprisingly salty asteroid Bennu contains the building blocks of life
The Bennu samples contain 14 of the 20 amino acids that are essential for life on Earth to build proteins. Also found were all five of the basic building block for life — Guanine, Cytosine, Adenine, Thymine, and Uracil, the key components of both DNA and RNA.
Asteroid Bennu contains the 'seeds of life,' OSIRIS-REx samples reveal
Scientists have found all five nucelobases alongisde minerals essential for life as we know it on the potentially hazardous asteroid Bennu.
Building blocks of life discovered on asteroid Bennu
The building blocks for organic matter have been discovered on the asteroid Bennu, as deatiled in a new study in the journal Nature Astronomy. The research gives new insight into how life originated on Earth and where we might find it elsewhere in the universe.
NASA Says Asteroid Soil Contains 'Building Blocks for Life'
NASA researchers have been studying rock and dust brought back to Earth from the asteroid, Bennu. Those particles revealed what scientists call "the building blocks for life." Researchers found 14 of the 20 amino acids that life on Earth uses to make proteins.
NASA Uncovers Life’s Building Blocks in Asteroid Bennu’s Pristine Sample
NASA’s OSIRIS-REx mission delivered samples from asteroid Bennu, revealing crucial molecules linked to life, including amino acids and nucleobases found in DNA and RNA. The presence of ammonia and formaldehyde suggests conditions ripe for forming complex molecules in space.
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The Bennu asteroid reveals clues to how the building blocks of life on Earth may have been seeded
NASA’s OSIRIS-REx mission returned from space with a sample of an asteroid named Bennu and scientists got to dive into a tale ...
ESA monitoring asteroid that could strike Earth
The European Space Agency is monitoring an asteroid with a slim chance to strike Earth in 2032. Asteroid 2024 YR4 was found ...
Building blocks of life found in samples from asteroid Bennu
Rock and dust samples retrieved by NASA from the asteroid Bennu exhibit some of the chemical building blocks of life, ...
Astronomers find asteroid with 1% chance of hitting Earth: Should we be worried?
YR4, which was recently spotted in the cosmos with a non-zero chance of hitting Earth in the coming years, may have caused ...
Lurking inside an asteroid: life’s ingredients
Scientists studying samples that NASA collected from the asteroid Bennu found a wide assortment of organic molecules that ...