Bennu’s Building Blocks of Life
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Produced by the Space Telescope Science Institute’s Office of Public Outreach in collaboration with NASA’s Universe of Learning partners: Caltech/IPAC, Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian, and NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory.
Video imagery:
- Edited video on Bennu discoveries: NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center
- Bennu data model rotating: NASA's Scientific Visualization Studio
- Graphic of Bennu and nucleotide bases: NASA Goddard/OSIRIS-REx
- Energy dispersive spectrometry map of an unprepared grain of asteroid Bennu: Natural History Museum, London/Tobias Salge.
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Photos of galaxies, planets, and other celestial bodies scroll by.
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Text: NEWS FROM THE UNIVERSE.
A scientist in PPE puts their hands into gloves that reach inside a chamber. They tip a soil sample inside the chamber into a metal vessel.
Text: BENNU'S BUILDING BLOCKS OF LIFE. FEBRUARY 6, 2025. In samples from the asteroid Bennu, delivered to Earth by NASA's OSIRIS-Rex mission, scientists have found some of the same building blocks that eventually gave rise to life on Earth.
The findings do not show evidence for life itself, but they suggest the conditions necessary for the emergence of lite were widespread across the early solar system.
Researchers identified magnesium sodium phosphate (green) that formed as water evaporated, possibly over thousands of years.
In the image, a large streak of green sits between dots of blue, yellow, and red.
Text: Also shown are calcium in red, iron in yellow, and magnesium in blue.
Scientists also found the five separate nucleotide bases that, on Earth, make up genetic information in RNA and DNA.
The five nucleotide bases appear.
Text: The Bennu samples shed new light on the origins of Earth and life as we know it, and increase the odds life could have formed on other planets and moons.
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This news was brought to you in part by the GODDARD SPACE FLIGHT CENTER IN GREENBELT, MD