NASA's $800 million OSIRIS-Rex mission brought home about a half-cup of crushed rocks and dirt from asteroid Bennu in 2023. - NASA Goddard / University of Arizona illustration In one study, a team led ...

"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 ...

Samples taken from the asteroid Bennu are continuing to shed light on the origins of the solar system. Scientists have been studying the samples since NASA’s Osiris-REx spacecraft carried them back to ...

Scientists have detected several sugars essential for life in the samples brought back from asteroid Bennu, NASA announced on Tuesday (Dec. 2). Analyzing pristine fragments of the asteroid delivered ...

Researchers discovered sugars essential for biology, including glucose, in the asteroid material for the first time. A strange, pliable substance nicknamed "space gum" was also found, which could have ...

Tryptophan, the essential amino acid behind the Thanksgiving myth that eating turkey can make you sleepy, has been found to exist on Bennu, a small asteroid that swings by our planet about every six ...

Far away on desolate Mars, a set of dust and rock samples awaits a ride that might never come. After years in limbo, NASA’s groundbreaking Mars Sample Return (MSR) programme, which was supposed to ...

The Bennu asteroid, a space rock not too far from Earth that is rich in carbon, continues to be a trove of information for scientists keen to learn about how life may have begun in our solar system.