NASA's Asteroid Bennu Samples Reveal Clues About Solar System Origins

NASA's ongoing analysis of samples from asteroid Bennu has yielded groundbreaking insights into the origins of our solar system and the building blocks of life. According to studies published on a recent Tuesday in the journals Nature Geosciences and Nature Astronomy, researchers have identified essential sugars, a novel gum-like substance, and an abundance of supernova dust in the samples collected by the OSIRIS-REx mission.

Yoshihiro Furukawa from Tohoku University in Japan led a team that discovered the five-carbon sugar ribose and six-carbon glucose in the samples, marking the first detection of glucose in extraterrestrial materials.

While these sugars do not indicate the presence of life, their presence, along with previously identified amino acids and nucleobases, suggests that the fundamental components of biological molecules are widespread in the solar system.

Ribose is crucial for RNA, which is essential for the storage and transfer of genetic information. This discovery supports the RNA world hypothesis, proposing that early life forms relied primarily on RNA rather than DNA.

Furthermore, the absence of deoxyribose in the Bennu samples suggests that ribose was more prevalent in the early solar system environment. Scott Sandford from NASA's Ames Research Center and Zack Gainsforth from the University of California, Berkeley, revealed the presence of an ancient gum-like material in Bennu samples that had never been seen before in astromaterials.

This flexible, nitrogen and oxygen-rich polymer likely formed as Bennu's parent asteroid warmed, potentially providing a chemical foundation for life on Earth. Sandford describes this substance as akin to a space plastic, with a complex molecular structure that differs from typical polymers found on Earth.

Finally, a study led by Ann Nguyen at NASA's Johnson Space Center found that the Bennu samples contained six times the amount of supernova dust compared to any other studied astromaterials, indicating that Bennu's parent body formed in a region of the protoplanetary disk enriched with stellar dust.

Nguyen highlighted that while significant alteration by fluids occurred, some pockets of less-altered material remain, offering a glimpse into the early solar system's chemical diversity. The OSIRIS-REx mission is managed by NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, with Dante Lauretta from the University of Arizona serving as the principal investigator.

For more information, visit NASA's OSIRIS-REx mission page.