There are 20 amino acids that create the proteins required for life on our planet — and scientists have now found exactly 14 of them on an asteroid millions of miles away. The asteroid in question, ...

All forms of Earth life have specific chemicals in their makeup, such as amino acids and sugars. Scientists have known that ...

Scientists from NASA’s OSIRIS-REx asteroid sample return mission recently delivered remarkable findings about asteroid 101955 Bennu after the mission returned its samples to Earth in 2023.

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 sample was collected from Bennu in October 2020 by a NASA mission called OSIRIS-REx, or Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification and Security-Regolith Explorer. It marked the ...

Rock and dust samples retrieved by NASA from the asteroid Bennu exhibit some of the chemical building blocks of life, according to research that provides some of the best evidence to date that such ...

Molecules friendly to life have been found in samples of the asteroid Bennu, which NASA collected with a robotic probe five years ago.

It took a while for scientists to gain access to the samples that NASA’s OSIRIS-REx mission took from the asteroid Bennu, but the wait is proving to be worth it. A new study published January 29 in ...

Rock and dust samples from the Bennu asteroid contain molecules that are the "key to life" on Earth, NASA officials announced on Wednesday.

The asteroid in question, named Bennu, was the focus of a very dreamy NASA mission called OSIRIS-REx that launched in 2016. The first goal of OSIRIS-REx was to blast a spacecraft toward the ...

The OSIRIS-REx spacecraft returned triumphantly to Earth in 2023 after collecting 4.3 ounces (121.6 grams) of precious grains of dust and rock from the asteroid Bennu in 2020. While that sample ...