Discoveries from Asteroid Bennu: Media Briefing Graphics

OSIRIS-REx MISSION RECAP

This highlight reel recaps the OSIRIS-REx mission, from assembly and launch of the spacecraft in 2016, to arrival at asteroid Bennu in 2018, TAG sample collection in 2020, the delivery of the sample to Earth in 2023, and curation of the Bennu samples in 2024.

Credit: NASA

MCCOY GRAPHIC 1

Researchers identified salt minerals in the Bennu samples that were deposited as a result of brine evaporation from the asteroid’s parent body. In particular, they found a number of sodium salts, such as the needles of hydrated sodium carbonate highlighted in purple in this false-colored image – salts that could easily have been compromised if the samples had been exposed to water in Earth’s atmosphere.

Credit: Rob Wardell/Tim McCoy/Smithsonian Institution; colorization: Heather Roper/University of Arizona

MCCOY GRAPHIC 1 – Original Version

Researchers identified salt minerals in the Bennu samples that were deposited as a result of brine evaporation from the asteroid’s parent body. In particular, they found a number of sodium salts, such as needles of hydrated sodium carbonate – salts that could easily have been compromised if the samples had been exposed to water in Earth’s atmosphere.

Credit: Rob Wardell/Tim McCoy/Smithsonian Institution

MCCOY GRAPHIC 2

Dramatic plumes, both large and small, spray water ice and vapor from many locations along the famed "tiger stripes" near the south pole of Saturn's moon Enceladus. This two-image mosaic is one of the highest resolution views acquired by NASA’s Cassini mission during its imaging survey of the geyser basin capping the southern hemisphere of Enceladus.

Credit: NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute

RUSSELL GRAPHIC 1

This series of images taken by the OSIRIS-REx spacecraft shows Bennu in one full rotation from a distance of around 50 miles (80 km). The spacecraft’s PolyCam camera obtained the thirty-six 2.2-millisecond frames over a period of four hours and 18 minutes.

Credit: NASA/Goddard/University of Arizona

RUSSELL GRAPHIC 2

This image is an energy dispersive spectrometry map of an unprepared grain of asteroid Bennu. Phosphorous is shown in green, calcium in red, iron in yellow and magnesium in blue. Researchers identified a 0.1mm vein of magnesium sodium phosphate (green cluster at center) formed by evaporation. They hypothesize that the phosphate may have played a role in the formation of organic molecules found within the samples.

Credit: Natural History Museum, London/Tobias Salge

GLAVIN GRAPHIC 1

A hot water extract from an asteroid Bennu sample (left, “Bennu tea”) was found to contain a surprising abundance of ammonia, indicating that the material likely formed in a cold region of the solar system beyond Jupiter’s orbit.

Credit: NASA Goddard/OSIRIS-REx

GLAVIN GRAPHIC 2

Many amino acids come in two mirror image versions, dubbed “left” and “right.” Life on Earth builds proteins almost exclusively from left-handed amino acids, but in the Bennu samples, left and right-handed amino acids exist in equal abundance.

Credit: NASA Goddard/OSIRIS-REx

DWORKIN GRAPHIC 1

Researchers at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center received their first sample of asteroid Bennu on November 8, 2023. This editor’s resource reel shows the sample arriving at Goddard’s Astrobiology Analytical Laboratory. It also includes imagery of the sample being collected by the OSIRIS-REx spacecraft.

Credit: NASA Goddard/OSIRIS-REx

DWORKIN GRAPHIC 2

Researchers at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center received a second sample of asteroid Bennu, totaling five grams of pristine material, on July 19, 2024. In this reel, the sample is prepared for hot water extract, or “Bennu tea,” at Goddard’s Astrobiology Analytical Laboratory.

Credit: NASA Goddard/OSIRIS-REx

This 3-D volume rendering was made from X-ray computed tomography data of a Bennu sample. The stone seen in this animation (OREX-800027-0) is on display at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History, in Washington, DC.

Credit: Scott Eckley/NASA JSC

This figure illustrates key molecules and minerals discovered in samples of asteroid Bennu. In the upper left panel are precursor molecules like ammonia and formaldehyde, while the upper right panel depicts salts and clays. These ingredients mixed with water inside Bennu’s parent body to synthesize organic molecules, shown at bottom. The lower right panel depicts nucleobases, the genetic components of DNA and RNA, while the lower left depicts amino acids, the building blocks of proteins. The Bennu samples contain all five of the nucleobases found in DNA and RNA, and 14 of the 20 amino acids that life uses to build proteins.

Credit: NASA Goddard/OSIRIS-REx/Dan Gallagher

A top-down view of the OSIRIS-REx Touch-and-Go-Sample-Acquisition-Mechanism (TAGSAM) head with the lid removed, revealing samples of asteroid Bennu inside. The sample material includes dust and rocks up to about 0.4 in (1 cm) in size.

Credit: NASA/Erika Blumenfeld & Joseph Aebersold

Fourteen of the twenty amino acids that life on Earth uses to build proteins were discovered within the Bennu samples.

Credit: NASA Goddard/OSIRIS-REx

Scientists found all five nucleobases – the genetic components of DNA and RNA – within the Bennu samples.

Credit: NASA Goddard/OSIRIS-REx

The Bennu samples exhibit an equal abundance of left-handed and right-handed amino acids, like the mirror images of L and D-serine pictured here. This means that early Earth may have started out with equal abundances as well, before life developed a left-handed biology.

Credit: NASA Goddard/OSIRIS-REx