Bennu Asteroid contains basic components of life, scientists say

The chemical construction blocks of life have been found in the granulated dust of an asteroid named Bennu, reveals an analysis.

The samples of the space rock, which were collected by a NASA spacecraft and brought to the earth, contain a rich variety of minerals and thousands of organic compounds.

These include amino acids, which are the molecules that make up proteins, as well as nucleobases, the fundamental components of DNA.

This does not mean that there is ever life in Bennu, but supports the theory that the asteroids delivered these vital ingredients to the earth when they crashed on our planet billions of years ago.

Scientists think that these same compounds could also have taken other worlds in our solar system.

“What we have learned from this is surprising,” said Professor Sara Russell, a cosmic mineralogist from the London Natural History Museum.

“He is telling us about our own origins, and allows us to answer these really great questions about where life began. And who does not want to know how life began?”

The findings are published in two articles in Nature magazine.

Grabbing a bit of Bennu has been one of the boldest missions that NASA has tried.

A spacecraft called Osiris Rex deployed a robotic arm to collect part of the space rock 500 meters wide, before packing it in a capsule and returning it to Earth in 2023.

Around 120 g of black dust with scientists from all over the world were collected and shared. This may not seem much material, but it has proven to be a treasure.

“Each grain tells us something new about Bennu,” said Professor Russell, who has been studying small spots.

About a teaspoon of the asteroid was sent to scientists in the United Kingdom.

New research has shown that the space rock is full of nitrogen and carbon -rich compounds.

These include 14 of the 20 amino acids that life on Earth uses to build proteins and the four ring -shaped molecules that make up DNA: adenine, guanine, cytosine and thymine.

The study has also found a variety of minerals and salts, which suggests that water was once present in the asteroid. The ammonia, which is important for biochemical reactions, was also discovered in the sample.

Some of these compounds have been seen in space rocks that have fallen to Earth, but others have not been detected so far.

“It is incredible how rich it is. It is full of these minerals that we have not seen before in the meteorites and their combination that we have not seen before. It has been something very exciting to study,” said Professor Russell.

This last study adds to the growing evidence that asteroids brought water and organic material to the earth.

“The early solar system was really turbulent and there were millions of asteroids like Bennu flying,” said Dr. Ashley King, of the Natural History Museum.

The idea is that they bombarded the young earth, sowing our planet with ingredients that the oceans gave us and made a life possible.

But the earth was not the only world that was beaten by space rocks. The asteroids would also have been colliding with other planets.

“The earth is unique, since it is the only place where we have found life so far, but we know that asteroids were delivering those ingredients, carbon and water, throughout the solar system,” said Dr. King.

“And one of the great things we are trying to understand now is, if you have the right conditions, why do we have life here on earth, and we could find it in another part of our solar system?”

It is a key question that scientists will continue to answer.

They have decades of research ahead of the dust brought from Bennu, and parts of our cosmic neighborhood still explore.