The Dust of Life

New research found chemical building blocks of life in the dust of an asteroid called “Bennu.”

To collect samples from the 1,640-foot-wide space rock, a NASA spacecraft unfurled a robotic arm, gathered about 4.2 ounces of material, packed it into a capsule, and returned it to Earth in 2023, where the dust samples were shared with scientists around the world.

Their analysis revealed an array of minerals and thousands of organic compounds, including 14 of the 20 amino acids that are used on Earth to build proteins in living organisms and all four of the ring-shaped molecules that make up DNA, BBC explained.

Scientists also found a variety of minerals and salts, indicating the past presence of water on the asteroid, along with ammonia, a key element for biochemical reactions.

“It’s just incredible how rich it is,” said Sara Russell, co-author of a different study on this topic. “It’s full of these minerals that we haven’t seen before in meteorites.”

While this does not mean there was ever life on Bennu, it corroborates the theory that asteroids delivered vital ingredients to Earth when crashing into the planet billions of years ago.

“(This discovery) is telling us about our own origins, and it enables us to answer these really, really big questions about where life began,” added Russell.

This study adds to existing and growing evidence that asteroids brought water and organic material to Earth in the early “turbulent” days of the Solar System when many millions of asteroids like Bennu were flying around.

As these asteroids bombarded the young Earth, they left behind essential ingredients – the building blocks that helped form oceans and made life possible.

But Earth wasn’t the only target, as these asteroids likely collided with other planets, delivering the same materials to them as well.

Scientists are now trying to understand the specific conditions that allowed life to prosper on Earth and whether similar conditions could support life elsewhere in the Solar System.