NASA’s OSIRIS-REx (Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification, and Security-Regolith Explorer) mission has detected amino acids in the largest asteroid sample ever collected in space, ...

Mirror, Mirror One study in Nature Astronomy detected all five of the nucleobases present in genetic material on Earth and 14 of the 20 amino acids that make up proteins. The asteroid also contained ...

But the space rock held even more secrets. Last week, scientists revealed the sample also included amino acids, considered the building blocks of life and other components found in DNA.

Analysing returned samples Tim McCoy (right), curator of meteorites at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History, and research geologist Cari Corrigan examine scanning electron microscope ...

Launched in September 2016, the Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification, and Security-Regolith Explorer (OSIRIS-REx) spacecraft began orbiting Bennu on New Years Eve 2018 ...

Use precise geolocation data and actively scan device characteristics for identification. This is done to store and access ...

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 ...

Material retrieved from the asteroid Bennu by NASA’s OSIRIS-REx spacecraft shows that all the basic building blocks of life were astonishingly widespread in the early solar system ...

A portion of the asteroid Bennu sample delivered to Earth by NASA’s OSIRIS-REx mission, set into a microscope slide at the agency’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. Credit: Molly ...

The OSIRIS-REx probe arrived at the 1,850-foot-wide asteroid in 2020, scooped up rock and dirt, and then jetted back to Earth. On Sept. 24, 2023, the OSIRIS-REx return capsule parachuted down to a ...

NASA explained that many amino acids can be created in two mirror-image versions, and while life on Earth almost exclusively produces one of the two versions, the samples from Bennu contain an ...