The ingredients from which life originated could have come from the stars, aboard the asteroids that targeted the earth in its distant past. And they were therefore probably present on all the planets of the Solar System. This is what emerges from the samples collected on the Asteroid Bennu from the NASA Osiris-Rex mission, whose analysis, recently described in a study published in the magazine Nature Astronomy.
The research reveals the first official results that come from the tests carried out on the samples taken from the NASA probe during its mission on Bennu, and transported to our planet in 2023. In total, scientists who participated in the project identified 14 of the twenty in the champions amino acids used by terrestrial life forms to produce proteins. And all the nitrogen bases with which DNA and RNA codify the genetic information necessary for their construction.
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The samples also contain very high levels of ammonia and formaldehyde, two substances that can react together and form complex molecules such as amino acids. All these substances, which represent the basic ingredients from which life probably had the origin on our planet, had already been identified previously within samples of extraterrestrial rocks collected on the earth’s surface. Having identified them in an asteroid in orbit in space, however, is the confirmation that these fragments of rock and dust formed on the edge of the sun system could be their place of origin, and the carrier with whom they reached the planets like ours.
“The Osiris Rex mission is already rewriting textbooks regarding what we know about the origins of our Solar System,” explains Nicky Fox, associated administrator of the Director for the scientific missions of NASA. “Asteroids represent a capsule of time showing the history of our planet, and the champions collected on Bennu are fundamental to know which ingredients existed in the sun system before life began on earth”.
A twin study, published in Nature, also describes the composition of the minerals present in the samples taken on the asteroid. And reveals the identikit of the environment in which the organic molecules identified on Bennu may have formed: 11 minerals identified in the sample derive from the slow evaporation of water containing their salts. Similar minerals, known as evaporiti, have also been identified on earth, and on celestial bodies such as Ceres and the Moon of Saturn Encelado. Those tracked down in the champions from Bennu, however, are the first examples of evaporated that preserve a complete track of all their slow training process, which lasted thousands of years. And they thus help to imagine the primordial environment of our sun system in which the elements necessary for the development of life originated.