NASA Finds Ingredients of Life in Fragments of Lost World

Released Wednesday, January 29, 2025

ID: 14774

- Produced by:
- Dan Gallagher
- Scientific consulting by:
- Daniel Glavin
- and Jason Dworkin

Scientists studying the Bennu samples have discovered evidence of a wet, salty environment from 4.5 billion years ago that created the molecular building blocks of life. Complete transcript available.

Watch this video on the NASA Goddard YouTube channel.

Universal Production Music: “Future Tense” by Gresby Race Nash [PRS]; “Take Off” by Nicholas Smith [PRS]; “Big Decision” by Gresby Race Nash [PRS]; “Waiting for the Answer” by Gresby Race Nash [PRS]

The origin of life is one of the deepest mysteries in science, but the clues to solving it have been buried by plate tectonics, the water cycle, and even life itself. For answers, scientists are looking beyond Earth to primitive asteroids like Bennu, the target of NASA’s daring OSIRIS-REx sample return mission. OSIRIS-REx gathered pristine material from Bennu in 2020 and delivered it to Earth in 2023 – revealing a lost world from the dawn of the solar system, with the right conditions to foster the building blocks of life.

Discoveries from Asteroid Bennu: Media Briefing Graphics

Read the press release on NASA.gov

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

Adenine and thymine are two of the five nucleobases that encode genetic information in DNA and RNA.

Credit: NASA Goddard/OSIRIS-REx

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Credits

Please give credit for this item to:
NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center

Producer
- Dan Gallagher (eMITS)
Scientists
- Daniel Glavin (NASA/GSFC)
- Timothy McCoy (Smithsonian Institution)
- Sara Russell (Natural History Museum, London)
- Harold Connolly (Rowan University)
Project scientist
- Jason Dworkin (NASA/GSFC)
Talents
- Kathryn Mersmann (eMITS)
- Ryan Fitzgibbons (eMITS)
Videographers
- Rob Andreoli (eMITS)
- John D. Philyaw (eMITS)
Graphics
- Dan Gallagher (eMITS)
Animators
- Walt Feimer (eMITS)
- Michael Lentz (eMITS)
- Jonathan North (eMITS)
- Adriana Manrique Gutierrez (eMITS)
- Kim Dongjae (eMITS)
Visualizers
- Kel Elkins (USRA)
- Scott Eckley (Jacobs-JETS)
Public affairs
- Rani Gran (NASA/GSFC)
Principal investigator
- Dante Lauretta (The University of Arizona)
Support
- Cat Wolner (The University of Arizona/LPL)
- William Steigerwald (NASA/GSFC)
- Lonnie Shekhtman (ADNET Systems, Inc.)
- Rachel Barry (Barrios Technology Ltd)
- Nancy Neal-Jones (NASA/GSFC)
Technical support
- Aaron E. Lepsch (ADNET Systems, Inc.)