Asteroid Bennu material shows organic precursor molecules that may have produced ingredients of life first formed from cryogenic ammonia.
When NASA’s OSIRIS-REx spacecraft passed by the Earth in 2023 and released a sample return capsule, it marked the end of a journey to visit and collect a small piece of an asteroid, but the journey to understanding that material had only just begun.
NASA is receiving its first long-awaited sample from an asteroid. OSIRIS-REx visited and collected samples from 101955 Bennu, a carbonaceous near-Earth asteroid. The sample’s return