NASA’s OSIRIS-REx mission uncovered a cosmic connection between asteroid Bennu and Earth’s Searles Lake. Both contain minerals formed by evaporating salty water, hinting that Bennu’s parent body once ...

The asteroid Bennu has provided groundbreaking insights into the chemistry that may have set the stage for life in the early ...

Rock and dust samples brought back to Earth from the asteroid Bennu contain organic matter and a variety of minerals crucial to the emergence 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, ...

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 ...

The two previous asteroid sample missions, by Japan, yielded considerably less material.Small amounts of Bennu's precious black ... the National Museum of Natural History's curator of meteorites.

The two previous asteroid sample missions, by Japan, yielded considerably less material.Small amounts of Bennu's precious black grains ... "that's really the pathway to life," said McCoy, the National ...

Nearly 60 years later, NASA’s OSIRIS-REx mission returned from space with a sample of an asteroid named Bennu, similar to the one that rained ... D.C., and the Natural History Museum in London. We’ve ...

Philipp Heck, the senior director of research at the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago and a member of the team at NASA that analyzed the Bennu sample, said the curation effort was vital to ...