Bennu Asteroid Contains Material Needed for Life, NASA Mission Finds

This discovery was only possible by analyzing samples that were collected directly from the asteroid then carefully preserved back on Earth,

he added

Even though asteroid Bennu has no life, the question is could other icy bodies harbour life

said Nick Timms, an associate professor at Curtin University's School of Earth and Planetary Sciences also involved in the research

We have discovered that next step on a pathway to life,

he said in a press release issued by the museum

We now know we have the basic building blocks to move along this pathway towards life, but we don't know how far along that pathway this environment could allow things to progress,

he said

That's the kind of environment that could have been essential to the steps that lead from elements to life,

said the Smithsonian Institution's Tim McCoy, one of the lead study authors

Nicola Foxscience mission chief

The OSIRIS-REx mission is already rewriting the textbook on what we understand about the ingredients thought to be necessary for the emergence of life in our solar system,

Nicky Fox, the associate administrator of NASA’s Science Mission Directorate, said Wednesday in a news briefing

What’s so significant about the OSIRIS-REx Bennu findings is that those samples are pristine,

said Danny Glavin, an astrobiologist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center

Jason P. Dworkinastrobiologist and study co-author

What did Bennu not have that Earth did have?”

said Jason Dworkin, an OSIRIS-REx project scientist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center

The bottom line is: We have a higher confidence that the organic material we’re seeing in these samples are extraterrestrial and not contamination,

he said

So we know this mineral occurs not just in the ancient history of Bennu’s parent body,

said McCoy

Jason P. Dworkinastrobiologist and study co-author

Perhaps scientists not yet born using methods not yet invented can make discoveries we haven't imagined,

said Dworkin

The surprising thing was the high concentrations of ammonia that we found, about 230 parts per million,

said NASA’s Daniel Glavin, a co-investigator on the OSIRIS-REx team

Jason P. Dworkinastrobiologist and study co-author

We can ask ourselves: if Bennu was such a [hospitable] environment, with rich alkaline mineral [and] brine, why didn't life form on Bennu

said NASA’s Jason Dworkin, project scientist for OSIRIS-REx

On this ancestral asteroid, four and a half billion years ago, there was something like a muddy surface that had pockets of fluid or veins of fluid, perhaps only a few feet wide, under the surface,

said McCoy at the press conference

We now know from Bennu that the raw ingredients of life were combining in really interesting and complex ways on Bennu’s parent body,

McCoy said

This is all very exciting because it suggests that asteroids like Bennu once acted like giant chemical factories in space and could have also delivered the raw ingredients for life to Earth and other bodies in our solar system,

said Glavin, lead author of a study on the samples published Wednesday in the journal Nature Astronomy

Having studied meteorites for 35 years, these record the first half billion years of our solar system history that were wiped out by plate tectonics and volcanism and the water cycle here on Earth,

McCoy said

These organic molecules have all been found previously in meteorites, but in contrast to meteorites, the Bennu samples are pristine and were protected from heating during atmospheric entry and exposure to terrestrial contamination,

Glavin said

Maybe it was because there just wasn’t enough time to do the more complex organic chemistry need for life before the salty liquids evaporated in the parent body,

Glavin said

These two papers together go hand in hand to say that Bennu was a much more interesting and complicated place than we probably gave it credit for even six months ago,

said Dr. Tim McCoy, co-lead author of the Nature study and curator of meteorites at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History