Add Yahoo as a preferred source to see more of our stories on Google. The OSIRIS-REx spacecraft spent two years observing the asteroid Bennu before it collected a ...

Add Yahoo as a preferred source to see more of our stories on Google. Penn State scientists say Bennu’s glycine may have formed in frozen, irradiated ice, not warm ...

When researchers finally cracked open the canisters from asteroid Bennu, they were not just sifting through dust. They were staring at a chemical time capsule packed with sugars, amino acids, salt ...

When scientists cracked open the first grains from asteroid Bennu, they expected a time capsule of rock and dust. What they found instead was a cocktail of sugars, phosphates, evaporite salts, and a ...

Did the ingredients for life as we know it exist in the early solar system? This is what a recent study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences hopes to address as a team of ...

Amino acids, the building blocks necessary for life, were previously found in samples of 4.6-billion-year-old rocks from an asteroid called Bennu, delivered to Earth in 2023 by NASA's OSIRIS-REx ...

"This confirms that life's building blocks can be formed in a diversity of environments throughout the universe." When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission. Here ...

Dust from asteroid Bennu is revealing a surprising origin story for life’s building blocks. New research suggests some amino acids formed in frozen ice exposed to radiation, not warm liquid water as ...

Penn State researchers think a key ingredient for life may have formed in deep freeze, not in a warm asteroid puddle. Scientists at Penn State; led by geoscientist Allison Baczynski and postdoctoral ...

Grab-and-go missions to asteroids have provided some of the most scientifically valuable samples since the Apollo missions—and they’re shaking up the search for life beyond Earth. The OSIRIS-REx ...

Analyzing a precious bit of space dust no bigger than a teaspoon, the Penn State team used custom instruments capable of measuring isotopes, slight variations in the mass of atoms. UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa ...