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.

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,

Samples returned from an asteroid contain a surprising abundance of the basic ingredients of life. They were discovered to be rich in carbon, nitrogen and ammonia, with over 30 kinds of amino acids and the five nucleobases found in RNA and DNA. 1 The asteroid, Bennu, was targeted by a Nasa mission that returned a capsule to Earth in September 2023.

Analysis of debris from the nearly 5 billion-year-old asteroid Bennu suggests the building blocks of DNA and RNA were present in the early days of our solar system.

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.

All forms of Earth life have specific chemicals in their makeup, such as amino acids and sugars. Scientists have known that asteroids hold molecules believed to be the precursors to these chemicals. By studying the Bennu samples, they hope to gain more insight into how these ingredients could have evolved.

The discovery is a capstone achievement for NASA, which went to great lengths to secure and deliver asteroid samples from asteroid Bennu in 2020.

Rock and dust samples from the Bennu asteroid contain molecules that are the "key to life" on Earth, NASA officials announced on Wednesday.

Bennu’s parent asteroid, which formed around 4.5 billion years ago, seems to have been home to pockets of liquid water.

NASA's OSIRIS-REx space probe dropped off samples of asteroid Bennu in 2023, and now those samples have been analyzed by researchers for their contents.

Lee esta nota de prensa en español aquí. Studies of rock and dust from asteroid Bennu delivered to Earth by NASA’s OSIRIS-REx (Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification and Security–Regolith Explorer) spacecraft have revealed molecules that,