Asteroid Pieces Brought to Earth May Offer a Clue to Life's Origin

In 2020 a NASA spacecraft visited the asteroid Bennu. In October it returned to earth with a sample. Monday scientists got their first data about it at a meeting of the American Geophysical Union — which is a truly big deal.

'Before Earth had biology, it had chemistry,' writes the Washington Post. 'How the one followed from the other — how a bunch of boring molecules transformed themselves into this special thing we call life — is arguably the greatest unknown in science.'

The mission's top scientist, Dante Lauretta... showed slides with a long list of intriguing molecules, including carbon-based organics, in the grains and pebbles retrieved from Bennu. They will shine light on the molecular building blocks of the solar system and 'maybe — still early phase — maybe insights into the origin of life.' This analysis has only just started. The team has not yet released a formal scientific paper. In his lecture, Lauretta cited one interesting triangular, light-colored stone, which he said contained something he'd never seen before in a meteorite. 'It's a head-scratcher right now. What is this material?' he said.

In an interview after the lecture, Lauretta said almost 5 percent of the sample is carbon. 'That is a very carbon-rich sample — the richest we have in all our extraterrestrial material.... We're still unraveling the complex organic chemistry, but it looks promising to really understand: Did these carbon-rich asteroids deliver fundamental molecules that may have gone on to contribute to the origin of life...?'

This space dirt has astrobiological import, though. By looking at prebiotic chemistry on Bennu, scientists will have a better idea what they are looking at if and when they find suspicious molecules elsewhere in the solar system, such as on Mars, Jupiter's moon Europa or Saturn's moon Enceladus. 'This is almost the perfect laboratory control from non-biological chemistry,' Glavin said. 'This better prepares us for our search for life on Mars, or Europa or Enceladus — places that might have had life at one point.'

Space.com quotes Lauretta as saying 'We definitely have hydrated, organic-rich remnants from the early solar system, which is exactly what we were hoping when we first conceived this mission almost 20 years ago.'

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