Ever wondered what space actually smells like? Astronauts have described it and trust me—it’s not what you’d expect. From ...

Scent was an important consideration in the mummification process that used oils, waxes and balms to preserve the body and ...

Welcome to ‘sensory heritage’, the study of how we engage with objects from the past besides what they look like.

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

(NASA) In a major twist to the study of life beyond Earth, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) said earlier this week that samples collected from asteroid Bennu contained a ...

A modern case in point: The asteroid Bennu contains all the materials needed for life. The OSIRIS-REx mission launched in 2016. Its main aim was to study Bennu and retrieve samples to bring back ...

A portion of the asteroid Bennu sample delivered to Earth by NASA’s OSIRIS-REx mission, set into a microscope slide at the agency’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. Credit: Molly ...

a senior scientist for sample return at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center and a co-author of the two papers. In 2016, NASA launched OSIRIS-REx, a robotic probe, to Bennu in order to gather ...

But samples taken directly out of an asteroid like Bennu, which has been floating around in the cold vacuum of space for billions of years, preserve a pristine ancient snapshot. Water and a high ...

but finding them in a "pristine sample" in space suggests that objects formed far from the sun, like Bennu, could have been an important source of "ingredients for life" throughout the solar ...