NASA's Perseverance rover collects Martian soil samples from Jezero Crater, revealing potential signs of past life on Mars.

Rock and dust samples brought back to Earth from the asteroid Bennu contain organic matter and a variety of minerals crucial to the emergence of life ...

In October 2020, a van-sized robotic spacecraft briefly touched down on the surface of Bennu, a 525-meter-wide asteroid 320 million kilometers from Earth.

When exposed to formaldehyde, which was also detected, ammonia can form amino acids, the building blocks of proteins.

Discover the fascinating findings from asteroid Bennu: pristine salt minerals reveal the presence of liquid water in the ...

When asteroids like Bennu hit the young Earth, they could have provided a complete package of complex molecules and the ...

The minerals McCoy’s team identified paint a picture of one possible environment present on rocky celestial bodies 4.5 ...

Two new papers describe hints to a brine-filled environment on the 4.5-billion-year-old space rock and the presence of amino ...

(The Conversation is an independent and nonprofit source of news, analysis and commentary from ... The samples are mostly water-rich clay, with sulfide, carbonate and iron oxide minerals. These are ...

Bennu contains minerals and thousands of organic molecules, including the chemical components that make up DNA.

Scientists have discovered a rich range of organic compounds in samples retrieved from an asteroid by a US spacecraft, including many of the key chemical building blocks of life.