In December 2018, after two long years of travel, NASA’s Osiris-Rex, … A year and, finally, in July 2020, he began executing his main mission: collecting samples of his surface, which did without having to perch on it, by means of a long retractable arm. The mission was a success, and after a long way back, on September 24, 2023 the sampling capsule of the samples of the Osiris-Rex He got rid of the ship and landed parachute in the Utah desert with his precious load, 121.6 grams of the original material that he formed, 4.5 billion years ago, the earth and the rest of our solar system. The samples were divided and provided to laboratories around the world.
Now, a team of researchers from the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History and the Goddard Center for Space Flights in Greenbelt, Maryland, publish in ‘Nature’ (here and here) The results of the most complete analysis made so far of these very valuable samples, and reveal that Bennu contains a large amount of organic matter, including 14 of the 20 amino acids present in life on earth as well as the five nucleobases of the DNA and the RNA (adenine, guanine, cytosine, timina and uracil).
A mosaic image of the Bennu Asteroid, composed of 12 images collected by the Osiris-Rex spacecraft from a range of 24 kilometers
NASA/Goddard/University of Arizona
Extraterrestrial salmueras
In addition, the researchers found another 19 amino acids that are not included in known biology, and discovered that, on the surface of the asteroid, evaporated water left a ‘salty broth’ that allowed the elementary ingredients of life to mix to create structures more complex. Those ‘pockets’ of liquid water, According to one of the studiesthey were already in Bennu’s ‘father’ asteroid, formed about 4.5 billion years ago. When the water evaporated, it left salmueras that resemble the salty scabs of dry lake beds on Earth.
The authors suggest that those extraterrestrial salmueras provided a crucial environment for the development of organic compounds. In their article, Smithsonian scientists describe a wide variety of evaporated minerals, including some that had never been observed in meteorite samples. “We now know,” says Tim McCoy, the main co -author of that study, “that the raw ingredients of life are combined in really interesting and complex ways in Bennu’s body. We have discovered the next step on the road to life ».
Together, the study concludes that Bennu shows a complex organic matter and much richer than the land biology itself.
A poster that shows all the compounds discovered in the Osiris-Rex sample
POT
The search continues
Bennu’s brine, however, differs from terrestrial in its mineral composition. For example, asteroid samples are rich in phosphorus, which is abundant in meteorites and relatively scarce on Earth. And they also lack a boron, a common element in the hypersaline lakes of the earth but extremely rare in meteorites.
Researchers believe that similar salmuelas probably still exist in other extraterrestrial bodies, such as the Dwarf Ceres or the icy moon of Saturna Calledo, where sodium carbonate has been detected. And it is very likely that these salmueras are also present in other asteroids, so McCoy and his colleagues plan to reexamine meteorites from the Smithsonian museum collection, in search of revealing traces that other analysis would have been able to overlook.
OREX-800044-101, the exhibition analyzed by the Japanese members of the Osiris-Rex sampling analysis team.
Yasuhiro Oba
McCoy emphasizes that the new discoveries illustrate the scientific legacy of the Osiris-Rex mission, since their samples, of which there is still much to learn, will feed the research for decades. “This is the type of finding,” says the scientist, “what you expect to do in a mission. We found something we did not expect, and that is the best reward for any type of exploration ».
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