Scientists analyze samples NASA brought from an asteroid received a startling detection that may mean space the rock was once part of a long extinct ocean world.
What the team found was water-soluble sodium magnesium phosphate in the speckled rocks—a mineral that no one expected because it didn’t show up in any of the data the spacecraft collected while it was at the asteroid. Benn. Phosphate compounds are key to all known life, forming the backbone of DNA.
New study resultspublished in Meteoritics and Planetary Sciencethey are an integral part of the “underwater asteroid”, so nicknamed because it has baffled scientists at every turn. OSIRIS-Rex mission.
“The presence and state of phosphates, along with other elements and compounds on Bennu, indicate a watery past for the asteroid,” said lead researcher Dante Lauretta. in the statement.
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This Bennu particle, about a millimeter wide, reveals a bright phosphate crust under the microscope.
Credit: Lauretta & Connolly et al. (2024) Meteoritics and Planetary Science
NASA’s $800 million OSIRIS-Rex mission, short for Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification and Security Regolith Explorer, launched in 2016. The robotic spacecraft completed its 4-billion-mile journey last year when it dropped the capsule from 63,000 miles above Earth onto a patch of Utah desert. It is the first US mission to collect a sample asteroid. These are the most important space souvenirs that NASA since Moon rocks of Apollocollected between 1969 and 1972.
NASA chose Benna for the mission because it did very little chance of hitting earth in the next centuries. Learning about the asteroid could be useful future efforts to redirect it.
But the team also chose Benna because it is overflowing with carbon, meaning it may contain the chemical origins of life. Some of its mineral debris could be older than the 4.5 billion year old solar system. These grains of stardust could have come from dying stars or supernovae which eventually led to the creation of sun and planets.
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NASA has released samples of asteroid Bennu collected during the OSIRIS-Rex mission to scientists around the world for research.
Credit: NASA/Erika Blumenfeld and Joseph Aebersold
All forms of terrestrial life have specific chemicals in their composition, such as amino acids and sugars. Scientists knew that asteroids contained molecules believed to be precursors to these chemicals. This is why many suspected space rocks were responsible for being brought to the planet through collisions in ancient cosmic history. By studying the Bennu samples, they hope to gain more information about how these components might have evolved.
“I want to know how you go from a simple carbon molecule like methane, which is a natural gas, to something like the amino acids that make up our proteins or the nucleic acid that makes up our genetic material,” Lauretta said last year.
His dream discovery would be proof that amino acids begin to join together through chemical bonds to form a chain, known as a peptide, signaling the development of proteins.
Bennu is teardrop shaped and made of gravel and boulders barely held together by their own microgravity.
Credit: NASA/University of Arizona Goddard Space Flight Center
The mission was successfully brought home half a cup of crushed stones and clay. So far, scientists have not been disappointed with their reward.
The sample is rich in nitrogen and carbon, the basic ingredients for life. The team’s first analysis found many clay minerals in particular serpentine. This is similar to the type of rocks found in mid-ocean ridges on Earth, where geologists think the recipe for life on our planet may have begun.
The magnesium and sodium phosphates in the Bennu sample resemble sodium phosphates Enceladus. This Saturnian moon is wrapped in a salty ocean beneath the ice and is known to shoot huge geysers into space. Similar phosphate-enriched fluids are found in terrestrial soda lakes such as Last Chance and Goodenough in Canada.
The return capsule of the OSIRIS-Rex sample after it landed on Earth.
Credit: NASA/Keegan Barber
In a new OSIRIS-Rex paper, scientists suggest a “possible connection” between Bennu and Enceladus, but this idea would require further investigation to be proven. Research on the sample has only begun to scratch the surface.
“These findings underscore the importance of collecting and studying material from asteroids like Bennu,” Lauretta said, “especially low-density material that would typically burn up (if it entered) Earth’s atmosphere.”