Wednesday, January 29, 2025

 SPACE/COSMOS

Dust from asteroid Bennu shows: Building blocks of life and possible habitats were widespread in our solar system


International study analyzes material from asteroid Bennu that was brought to Earth by NASA's OSIRIS-REx space mission



Goethe University Frankfurt

Studies of the smallest amounts of material 

image: 

Cosmochemist Professor Frank Brenker shows three grains of a meteorite that the Goethe University team used to test research methods in advance. The quantity and type corresponded to the material from the asteroid Bennu.

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Credit: Uwe Dettmar for Goethe University




FRANKFURT. It took two years for NASA’s OSIRIS-REx space probe to return from asteroid Bennu before dropping off a small capsule as it flew past Earth, which was then recovered in the desert of the U.S. state of Utah on September 24, 2023. Its contents: 122 grams of dust and rock from asteroid Bennu. The probe had collected this sample from the surface of the 500-metre agglomerate of unconsolidated material in a touch-and-go maneuver that took just seconds. Since the capsule protected the sample from the effects of the atmosphere, it could be analyzed in its original state by a large team of scientists from more than 40 institutions around the world.

The partners in Germany were geoscientists Dr. Sheri Singerling, Dr. Beverley Tkalcec and Prof. Frank Brenker from Goethe University Frankfurt. They examined barely visible grains of Bennu using the transmission electron microscope of the Schwiete Cosmochemistry Laboratory, set up at Goethe University only a year ago with the support of the Dr. Rolf M. Schwiete Foundation, the German Research Foundation and the State of Hesse. Its goal: to reconstruct the processes that took place on Bennu’s protoplanetary parent body more than four billion years ago and ultimately led to the formation of the minerals that exist today. The Frankfurt scientists succeeded in doing this by analyzing the mineral grains’ exact structure and determining their chemical composition at the same time. They also carried out trace element tomography of the samples at accelerators such as DESY (Deutsches Elektronen-Synchrotron) in Hamburg.

“Together with our international partner teams, we have been able to detect a large proportion of the minerals that are formed when salty, liquid water – known as brine – evaporates more and more and the minerals are precipitated in the order of their solubility,” explains Dr. Sheri Singerling, who manages the Schwiete Cosmo Lab. In technical terms, the rocks that form from such precipitation cascades are called evaporites. They have been found on Earth in dried-out salt lakes, for example.

“Other teams have found various precursors of biomolecules such as numerous amino acids in the Bennu samples,” reports Prof. Frank Brenker. “This means that Bennu’s parent body had some known building blocks for biomolecules, water and – at least for a certain time – energy to keep the water liquid.” However, the break-up of Bennu’s parent body interrupted all processes very early on and the traces that have now been discovered were preserved for more than 4.5 billion years.

“Other celestial bodies such as Saturn's moon Enceladus, or the dwarf planet Ceres have been able to evolve since then and are still very likely to have liquid oceans or at least remnants of them under their ice shells,” says Brenker. “Since this means that they have a potential habitat, the search for simple life that could have evolved in such an environment is a focus of future missions and sample studies.”

OSIRIS-REx
NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, provided overall mission management, systems engineering, and the safety and mission assurance for OSIRIS-REx. Dante Lauretta of the University of Arizona, Tucson, is the principal investigator. The university leads the science team and the mission’s science observation planning and data processing. Lockheed Martin Space in Littleton, Colorado, built the spacecraft and provided flight operations.

Background information
Daniel P. Glavin et al.: Abundant ammonia and nitrogen-rich soluble organic matter in samples from asteroid (101955) Bennu Nature Astronomy (2025) https://doi.org/10.1038/s41550-024-02472-9

 

Inauguration of Schwiete Cosmo Lab (October 2023)
https://aktuelles.uni-frankfurt.de/english/study-of-asteroid-bennu-goethe-university-frankfurt-inaugurates-schwiete-cosmolab/

 

 

Picture downloads:

http://www.uni-frankfurt.de/165813816

 

Captions:
1) Studies of the smallest amounts of material: Cosmochemist Professor Frank Brenker shows three grains of a meteorite that the Goethe University team used to test research methods in advance. The quantity and type corresponded to the material from the asteroid Bennu. Photo: Uwe Dettmar for Goethe University.
2) A few specks of dust: The samples analyzed in the transmission electron microscope of the Schwiete Cosmo Lab at Goethe University are barely visible. Arrows indicate three of the samples. Photo without arrows: NASA
3) In the lab: Dr. Sheri Singerling inserts a sample carrier into the transmission electron microscope of the Schwiete Cosmo Lab. Photo: Uwe Dettmar for Goethe University
4) In the lab (2): Dr. Sheri Singerling analyzing the TEM images of the material from Bennu. Photo: Uwe Dettmar for Goethe University
 

NASA photo and image material:
https://science.nasa.gov/mission/osiris-rex
and
https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/gallery/osirisrex/


The samples analyzed in the transmission electron microscope of the Schwiete Cosmo Lab at Goethe University are barely visible. Arrows indicate three of the samples.

Credit

Photo without arrows: NASA


In the Schwiete Cosmo Lab

Berkeley Lab helps explore mysteries of Asteroid Bennu



The Advanced Light Source and Molecular Foundry provided powerful tools to study asteroid samples returned by NASA’s OSIRIS-REx mission. Researchers found a telltale set of salts formed by evaporation that illuminate Bennu’s watery past




DOE/Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory

Mosaic image of asteroid Bennu 

image: 

This mosaic image of asteroid Bennu is composed of 12 images taken by the OSIRIS-REx spacecraft from a range of 15 miles.

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Credit: NASA/Goddard/University of Arizona




During the past year, there’s been an unusual set of samples at the Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab): material gathered from the 4.5-billion-year-old asteroid Bennu when it was roughly 200 million miles from Earth.

Berkeley Lab is one of more than 40 institutions investigating Bennu’s chemical makeup to better understand how our solar system and planets evolved. In a new study published today in the journal Nature, researchers found evidence that Bennu comes from an ancient wet world, with some material from the coldest regions of the solar system, likely beyond the orbit of Saturn. 

The asteroid contained a set of salty mineral deposits that formed in an exact sequence when a brine evaporated, leaving clues about the type of water that flowed billions of years ago. Brines could be a productive broth for cooking up some of the key ingredients of life, and the same type of minerals are found in dried-up lake beds on Earth (such as Searles Lake in California) and have been observed on Jupiter’s moon Europa and Saturn’s moon Enceladus.

“It’s an amazing privilege to be able to study asteroid material, direct from space,” said Matthew Marcus, a Berkeley Lab scientist who runs the Advanced Light Source (ALS) beamline where some of the samples were studied and who wrote one of the programs used to analyze their chemical composition. "We have highly specialized instruments that can tell us what Bennu is made of and help reveal its history."

The samples from Bennu were gathered by NASA’s OSIRIS-REx mission, the first U.S. mission to return samples from an asteroid. The mission returned nearly 122 grams of material from Bennu – the largest sample ever captured in space and returned to Earth from an extraterrestrial body beyond the Moon.

Marcus teamed up with Scott Sandford from NASA Ames Research Center and Zack Gainsforth from the UC Berkeley Space Sciences Laboratory to study the Bennu sample using scanning transmission X-ray microscopy (STXM) at the ALS. By varying the energy of the X-rays, they were able to determine the presence (or absence) of specific chemical bonds at the nanometer scale and map out the different chemicals found in the asteroid. The science team discovered that some of the last salts to evaporate from the brine were mixed into the rock at the finest levels.

“This sort of information provides us with important clues about the processes, environments, and timing that formed the samples,” Sandford said. “Understanding these samples is important, since they represent the types of materials that were likely seeded on the surface of the early Earth and may have played a role in the origins and early evolution of life.”

At Berkeley Lab’s Molecular Foundry, researchers used a beam of electrons to image the same Bennu samples with transmission electron microscopy (TEM). The Foundry also helped prepare the samples for the experiments run at the ALS. Experts used an ion beam to carve out microscopic sections of the material that are about a thousand times thinner than a sheet of paper.

“Being able to examine the same exact atoms using both STXM and TEM removed many of the uncertainties in interpreting our data,” Gainsforth said. “We were able to confirm that we really were seeing a ubiquitous phase formed by evaporation. It took a lot of work to get Bennu to give up its secrets, but we are delighted with the final result.” 

This is not the first time the ALS and Molecular Foundry have studied material from space. Researchers also used the two facilities to investigate samples from the asteroid Ryugu, building up our understanding of our early solar system. And there’s still more to come, with additional studies of Bennu at both the STXM and infrared beamlines at the ALS planned for the coming year.

Berkeley Lab researchers also contributed to a second paper published today in Nature Astronomy that analyzed organic materials found on the asteroid. Within the Bennu sample, the science team identified 14 of the 20 amino acids that life on Earth uses to build proteins. They also found all five nucleobases, the ring-shaped molecules that form DNA and RNA, as well as ammonia, which on Earth might have helped spark the emergence of early life. 

The results support the idea that asteroids like Bennu may have delivered water and essential chemical building blocks of life to Earth in the distant past. Based on the similarities between asteroid Bennu and the icy dwarf planets and moons of our outer solar system, these potential ingredients for life could be widespread.

Read more in the NASA press release.

NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, provided overall mission management, systems engineering, and the safety and mission assurance for OSIRIS-REx. Dante Lauretta of the University of Arizona, Tucson, is the principal investigator. The university leads the science team and the mission’s science observation planning and data processing. Lockheed Martin Space in Littleton, Colorado, built the spacecraft and provided flight operations.

 

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Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) is committed to groundbreaking research focused on discovery science and solutions for abundant and reliable energy supplies. The lab’s expertise spans materials, chemistry, physics, biology, earth and environmental science, mathematics, and computing. Researchers from around the world rely on the lab’s world-class scientific facilities for their own pioneering research. Founded in 1931 on the belief that the biggest problems are best addressed by teams, Berkeley Lab and its scientists have been recognized with 16 Nobel Prizes. Berkeley Lab is a multiprogram national laboratory managed by the University of California for the U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Science. 

DOE’s Office of Science is the single largest supporter of basic research in the physical sciences in the United States, and is working to address some of the most pressing challenges of our time. For more information, please visit energy.gov/science.

Pristine asteroid samples reveal secrets of the ancient solar system

Researchers have gained an unprecedented glimpse into the early history of our solar system through some of the most well-preserved asteroid samples ever collected, potentially transforming our understanding of planetary formation and the origins of life


Curtin University


Curtin University researchers have gained an unprecedented glimpse into the early history of our solar system through some of the most well-preserved asteroid samples ever collected, potentially transforming our understanding of planetary formation and the origins of life.

Experts from Curtin’s School of Earth and Planetary Sciences were selected to be amongst the first in the world to inspect samples collected during NASA’s seven-year, OSIRIS-REx mission to the ancient asteroid Bennu.

Asteroid Bennu is thought to be made of rubble fragments from a 4.5-billion-year-old parent body, containing materials that originated beyond Saturn, which was destroyed long ago in a collision with another object.

The OSIRIS-REx sample analysis team identified a variety of salts, including sodium carbonates, phosphates, sulphates, and chlorides.

Associate Professor Nick Timms said the discovery of these salts was a breakthrough in space research.

“We were surprised to identify the mineral halite, which is sodium chloride — exactly the same salt that you might put on your chips,” Associate Professor Timms said.

“The minerals we found form from evaporation of brines – a bit like salt deposits forming in the salt lakes that we have in Australia and around the world.

“By comparing with mineral sequences from salt lakes on Earth, we can start to envisage what it was like on the parent body of asteroid Bennu, providing insight into ancient cosmic water activity.”

Evaporite minerals and brines are known to help organic molecules develop on Earth.

“A briny, carbon-rich environment on Bennu’s parent body was probably suitable for assembling the building blocks of life,” Associate Professor Timms said.

The key to the new discovery was the pristine condition of the samples.

Many of the salts present degrade quickly when exposed to the atmosphere, however the samples collected on the OSIRIS-REx mission were sealed and purged with nitrogen once on Earth to prevent contamination.

NASA chose Curtin to perform early analysis on the samples — the largest ever retrieved from a world beyond the Moon — due to the globally renowned John de Laeter Centre’s world-leading expertise and facilities.

Centre Director Associate Professor Will Rickard said the facility houses more than $50 million in advanced analytical instruments.

“The Centre is one of the few places in the world which could verify if the salts were in fact extraterrestrial in origin or if they had been contaminated by elements from Earth,” Associate Professor Rickard said.

“Our specialised facilities at Curtin allowed us to maintain the pristine condition of the samples, which meant when we discovered the salts were extraterrestrial and unaltered, we knew it was an important finding because these samples preserve evidence of some of the earliest phenomena of the solar system.”

The findings from returned samples of asteroid Bennu may provide researchers insight into what happens on distant icy bodies in our solar system, such as Saturn’s moon Enceladus and the dwarf planet Ceres in the asteroid belt.

“Both Enceladus and Ceres have subsurface brine oceans,” Associate Professor Timms said.

“Even though asteroid Bennu has no life, the question is could other icy bodies harbour life?”

NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, provided overall mission management, systems engineering, and the safety and mission assurance for OSIRIS-REx.

Dante Lauretta of the University of Arizona, Tucson, is the principal investigator.

The university leads the science team and the mission’s science observation planning and data processing.

Lockheed Martin Space in Littleton, Colorado, built the spacecraft and provided flight operations.

‘An evaporite sequence from ancient brine recorded in Bennu samples’ was published in Nature.

Journal

Nature

DOI

10.1038/s41586-024-08495-6

Method of Research

Content analysis

Subject of Research

Not applicable

Article Title

An evaporite sequence from ancient brine recorded in Bennu samples

Article Publication Date

29-Jan-2025



NASA’s asteroid Bennu sample reveals mix of life’s ingredients



NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center

Jason Dworkin and Asteroid Sample Vial 

image: 

In this video frame, Jason Dworkin holds up a vial that contains part of the sample from asteroid Bennu delivered to Earth by NASA’s OSIRIS-REx (Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification, and Security – Regolith Explorer) mission in 2023. Dworkin is the mission’s project scientist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland.

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Credit: NASA/James Tralie




Studies of rock and dust from asteroid Bennu delivered to Earth by NASA’s OSIRIS-REx (Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification and Security–Regolith Explorer) spacecraft have revealed molecules that, on our planet, are key to life, as well as a history of saltwater that could have served as the “broth” for these compounds to interact and combine.

The findings do not show evidence for life itself, but they do suggest the conditions necessary for the emergence of life were widespread across the early solar system, increasing the odds life could have formed on other planets and moons.

“NASA’s OSIRIS-REx mission already is rewriting the textbook on what we understand about the beginnings of our solar system,” said Nicky Fox, associate administrator, Science Mission Directorate at NASA Headquarters in Washington. “Asteroids provide a time capsule into our home planet’s history, and Bennu’s samples are pivotal in our understanding of what ingredients in our solar system existed before life started on Earth.”

In research papers published Wednesday in the journals Nature and Nature Astronomy, scientists from NASA and other institutions shared results of the first in-depth analyses of the minerals and molecules in the Bennu samples, which OSIRIS-REx delivered to Earth in 2023.

Detailed in the Nature Astronomy paper, among the most compelling detections were amino acids – 14 of the 20 that life on Earth uses to make proteins – and all five nucleobases that life on Earth uses to store and transmit genetic instructions in more complex terrestrial biomolecules, such as DNA and RNA, including how to arrange amino acids into proteins.

Scientists also described exceptionally high abundances of ammonia in the Bennu samples. Ammonia is important to biology because it can react with formaldehyde, which also was detected in the samples, to form complex molecules, such as amino acids – given the right conditions. When amino acids link up into long chains, they make proteins, which go on to power nearly every biological function.

These building blocks for life detected in the Bennu samples have been found before in extraterrestrial rocks. However, identifying them in a pristine sample collected in space supports the idea that objects that formed far from the Sun could have been an important source of the raw precursor ingredients for life throughout the solar system.

“The clues we’re looking for are so minuscule and so easily destroyed or altered from exposure to Earth’s environment,” said Danny Glavin, a senior sample scientist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, and co-lead author of the Nature Astronomy paper. “That’s why some of these new discoveries would not be possible without a sample-return mission, meticulous contamination-control measures, and careful curation and storage of this precious material from Bennu.”

While Glavin’s team analyzed the Bennu samples for hints of life-related compounds, their colleagues, led by Tim McCoy, curator of meteorites at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History in Washington, and Sara Russell, cosmic mineralogist at the Natural History Museum in London, looked for clues to the environment these molecules would have formed. Reporting in the journal Nature, scientists further describe evidence of an ancient environment well-suited to kickstart the chemistry of life.

Ranging from calcite to halite and sylvite, scientists identified traces of 11 minerals in the Bennu sample that form as water containing dissolved salts evaporates over long periods of time, leaving behind the salts as solid crystals.

Similar brines have been detected or suggested across the solar system, including at the dwarf planet Ceres and Saturn’s moon Enceladus.

Although scientists have previously detected several evaporites in meteorites that fall to Earth’s surface, they have never seen a complete set that preserves an evaporation process that could have lasted thousands of years or more. Some minerals found in Bennu, such as trona, were discovered for the first time in extraterrestrial samples.

“These papers really go hand in hand in trying to explain how life’s ingredients actually came together to make what we see on this aqueously altered asteroid,” said McCoy.

For all the answers the Bennu sample has provided, several questions remain. Many amino acids can be created in two mirror-image versions, like a pair of left and right hands. Life on Earth almost exclusively produces the left-handed variety, but the Bennu samples contain an equal mixture of both. This means that on early Earth, amino acids may have started out in an equal mixture, as well. The reason life “turned left” instead of right remains a mystery.

“OSIRIS-REx has been a highly successful mission,” said Jason Dworkin, OSIRIS-REx project scientist at NASA Goddard and co-lead author on the Nature Astronomy paper. “Data from OSIRIS-REx adds major brushstrokes to a picture of a solar system teeming with the potential for life. Why we, so far, only see life on Earth and not elsewhere, that’s the truly tantalizing question.”

NASA Goddard provided overall mission management, systems engineering, and the safety and mission assurance for OSIRIS-REx. Dante Lauretta of the University of Arizona, Tucson, is the principal investigator. The university leads the science team and the mission’s science observation planning and data processing. Lockheed Martin Space in Littleton, Colorado, built the spacecraft and provided flight operations. NASA Goddard and KinetX Aerospace were responsible for navigating the OSIRIS-REx spacecraft. Curation for OSIRIS-REx takes place at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston. International partnerships on this mission include the OSIRIS-REx Laser Altimeter instrument from CSA (Canadian Space Agency) and asteroid sample science collaboration with JAXA’s (Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency) Hayabusa2 mission. OSIRIS-REx is the third mission in NASA’s New Frontiers Program, managed by the agency’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, for the agency’s Science Mission Directorate in Washington.

For more information on the OSIRIS-REx mission, visit:

https://www.nasa.gov/osiris-rex

NASA Finds Ingredients of Life in Fragments of Lost World (VIDEO)

Traces of ancient brine discovered on the asteroid Bennu contain minerals crucial to life



Left by evaporated water, the salty residue contains compounds never observed before in samples from asteroids




Smithsonian

Scanning electron microscope images of trona found in samples of the asteroid Bennu. 

image: 

Scanning electron microscope images of trona found in samples of the asteroid Bennu returned by NASA’s OSIRIS-REx mission.

Trona is water-bearing sodium carbonate, also known commonly as soda ash.

Each needle is less than a micrometer wide by 5–10 micrometers in length; a human hair is about 100 micrometers wide. The needles form a vein that cuts through the clay-rich rock around it, with small pieces of rock also resting on top of the sodium carbonate needles.

These minerals formed on Bennu’s parent body through the evaporation of salty, sodium-rich waters more than 4.5 billion years ago during the birth of the solar system. As this water evaporated, it formed minerals rich in sodium, carbon, sulfur, phosphorus, chlorine and fluorine.

These minerals formed much like they do today in soda lakes on Earth and subsurface oceans on icy moons and dwarf planets of the outer solar system, including Saturn’s moon Enceladus and the dwarf planet Ceres.

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Credit: Rob Wardell, Tim Gooding and Tim McCoy, Smithsonian.




A new analysis of samples from the asteroid Bennu, NASA’s first asteroid sample captured in space and delivered to Earth, reveals that evaporated water left a briny broth where salts and minerals allowed the elemental ingredients of life to intermingle and create more complex structures. The discovery suggests that extraterrestrial brines provided a crucial setting for the development of organic compounds.

            In a paper published today, Jan. 29, in the journal Nature, scientists at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History describe a sequence of evaporated minerals that date back to the early formation of the solar system. The assortment of minerals includes compounds that have never been observed in other extraterrestrial samples.

            “We now know from Bennu that the raw ingredients of life were combining in really interesting and complex ways on Bennu’s parent body,” said Tim McCoy, the museum’s curator of meteorites and the co-lead author on the new paper. “We have discovered that next step on a pathway to life.”

Bennu’s parent asteroid, which formed around 4.5 billion years ago, seems to have been home to pockets of liquid water. The new findings indicate that water evaporated and left behind brines that resemble the salty crusts of dry lakebeds on Earth.

A Historic Mission

Bennu has long intrigued researchers due to its near-Earth orbit and carbon-rich composition. Scientists posited that the asteroid contained traces of water and organic molecules and theorized that similar asteroids could have brought these materials to a primordial Earth.

            In 2020, NASA’s OSIRIS-REx (Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification and Security-Regolith Explorer) spacecraft collected samples from Bennu, becoming the first U.S. space mission to collect a sample from the surface of an asteroid and the only sample collected from a planetary body in nearly 50 years—since the Apollo missions. In September 2023, as OSIRIS-REx soared past Earth, it dropped a capsule containing the Bennu samples. When the capsule touched down in the Utah desert, scientists were on site to retrieve it and protect the samples inside from terrestrial contamination.

            In total, OSIRIS-REx collected around120 grams of material, which is about the weight of a bar of soap and double the mission-required amount. The invaluable samples were divvied up and loaned to researchers around the world to analyze. This included Sara Russell, a cosmic mineralogist at the Natural History Museum in London and the co-lead author on the new paper with McCoy.

“It’s been an absolute joy to be involved in this amazing mission, and to collaborate with scientists from around the world to attempt to answer one of the biggest questions asked by humanity: how did life begin,” Russell said. “Together we have made huge progress in understanding how asteroids like Bennu evolved, and how they may have helped make the Earth habitable.”

A Surprising Discovery

            NASA loaned the Smithsonian multiple Bennu samples (one of which is on display). McCoy and his colleagues analyzed these specimens using the museum’s state-of-the-art scanning electron microscope, funded in part through the Smithsonian Gem and Mineral Collectors donor group. This allowed the researchers to inspect microscopic features on asteroid fragments less than a micrometer—or 1/100th the width of a human hair—in size.  

The team was surprised to find traces of water-bearing sodium carbonate compounds in the Bennu samples studied at the museum. Commonly known as soda ash or by the mineral name trona, these compounds have never been directly observed in any other asteroid or meteorite. On Earth, sodium carbonates often resemble baking soda and naturally occur in evaporated lakes that were rich in sodium, such as Searles Lake in the Mojave Desert.

The surprising discovery of sodium carbonate prompted McCoy to examine mineral specimens in the museum’s National Mineral Collection that contained the compound. He also reached out to his teammates around the world to see if they had observed anything noteworthy in other Bennu samples. The scientists discovered 11 minerals in total that likely existed in a brine-like environment on Bennu’s parent body.

Bennu’s brine differs from terrestrial brines due to its mineral makeup. For example, the Bennu samples are rich in phosphorus, which is abundant in meteorites and relatively scarce on Earth. The samples also largely lack boron, which is a common element in hypersaline soda lakes on Earth but extremely rare in meteorites.

The researchers posit that similar brines likely still exist on other extraterrestrial bodies, including the dwarf planet Ceres and Saturn’s icy moon Enceladus where spacecraft have detected sodium carbonate. These brines likely also exist on other asteroids, and McCoy and his colleagues plan to reexamine meteorite specimens in the museum’s collection. While some of the salts observed in the Bennu brine would break down in Earth’s atmosphere, these minerals may leave telltale traces on meteorites that past scientists may have missed.

A Pathway Toward Life

While the Bennu brines contain an intriguing suite of minerals and elements, it remains unclear if the local environment was suitable to craft these ingredients into highly complex organic structures.

“We now know we have the basic building blocks to move along this pathway towards life, but we don’t know how far along that pathway this environment could allow things to progress,” McCoy said.

            A second study, publishing concurrently in the journal Nature Astronomy Jan. 29, offers additional insights into Bennu’s composition. This paper describes multiple protein-building amino acids in the Bennu samples. It also reports the discovery of the five nucleobases that make up RNA and DNA. Some of these compounds have not been observed in meteorites that fall to Earth. Senior scientists Danny Glavin and Jason Dworkin at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, are lead authors on the Nature Astronomy paper.

            The two new studies are among the first published analyses of the Bennu samples. The Nature paper co-led by McCoy and Russell is also a major milestone in the National Museum of Natural History’s initiative, Our Unique Planet. As a public–private research partnership, Our Unique Planet investigates what sets Earth apart from its cosmic neighbors by exploring the origins of the planet’s oceans and continents as well as how minerals may have served as templates for life.

McCoy thinks the new discoveries illustrate the scientific legacy of the OSIRIS-REx mission as the samples it collected will fuel research for decades. The samples also highlight how much is left to learn about Bennu.

“This is the kind of finding you hope you’re going to make on a mission,” McCoy said. “We found something we didn’t expect, and that’s the best reward for any kind of exploration.”

In addition to McCoy, Smithsonian-affiliated co-authors included Cari Corrigan, Rob Wardell, Tim Gooding and Tim Rose. This study also included authors affiliated with the University of Arizona; NASA; Goethe University; Curtin University; Côte d'Azur University; the University of California, Berkeley; California State University; Purdue University; the University of Manchester; Hokkaido University; the University of Rochester; Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory; University of Queensland; Jean Monnet University; the Southwest Research Institute; Open University; the Royal Ontario Museum; the University of Tokyo; Rowan University; and the American Museum of Natural History.

This research was supported by NASA as well as UK Research and Innovation, the UK Science and Technology Facilities Council and the Canadian Space Agency.

NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, provided overall mission management, systems engineering and the safety and mission assurance for OSIRIS-REx. Dante Lauretta of the University of Arizona, Tucson, is the principal investigator. The university leads the science team and the mission’s science observation planning and data processing. Lockheed Martin Space in Littleton, Colorado, built the spacecraft and provided flight operations.

About the National Museum of Natural History

            The National Museum of Natural History is connecting people everywhere with Earth’s unfolding story. It is one of the most visited natural history museums in the world. Opened in 1910, the museum is dedicated to maintaining and preserving the world’s most extensive collection of natural history specimens and human artifacts. The museum is open daily, except Dec. 25, from 10 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. Admission is free. For more information, visit the museum on its website and blog and on FacebookTwitter and Instagram.

Earth-originating examples of minerals found in Bennu samples. These specimens are from the U.S. National Mineral Collection at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History and show the minerals observed in Bennu samples as formed and found on Earth. Four of these minerals had not been previously observed in extraterrestrial samples: gaylussite, villiaumite, thenardite, trona.

Foreground, left to right: calcite, gaylussite, sylvite with halite, villiaumite.

  • Calcite from Saint Joe Lead District, Missouri, U.S. (NMNH 134335). Calcite (calcium carbonate) is the first mineral to form from evaporation on Bennu.
  • Gaylussite (white coating) from Searles Lake, California, U.S. (NMNH 102881) on trona.  Gaylussite (water-bearing sodium calcium carbonate) is typically the first sodium-bearing mineral to form from evaporating brines on Earth and likely formed the same way on Bennu.
  • Sylvite with associated halite from Stassfurt, Germany (NMNH 56103). Sylvite (potassium chloride) and halite (sodium chloride; common table salt) form late in salty, evaporating fluids.  As in this sample, these two minerals are found in association in Bennu.
  • Villiaumite from Murmanskaja, Russia (NMNH 176297). Villiaumite (sodium fluoride) is the last phase formed during evaporation of the salty, sodium-rich water on Bennu.

Background, left to right: magnetite, thenardite, trona.

  • Magnetite from St. Lawrence County, New York, U.S. (NMNH R 20522, from the Roebling Collection). Magnetite (iron oxide) is formed by the precipitation of iron dissolved in fluid early in the evaporation sequence. The distinctive cubic form is observed in samples of Bennu, although at a scale of micrometers.
  • Thenardite from Deep Springs Valley, California, U.S. (NMNH 94538). Thenardite (sodium sulfate) first appears when the brine becomes sodium-rich, lending the moniker “soda lakes” to bodies of water on Earth. On Bennu, thenardite is the first sodium-rich mineral to form and the first occurrence of oxidized sulfur.
  • Trona from Searles Lake, California, U.S. (NMNH 166722). Trona (water-bearing sodium carbonate) forms in the middle of the evaporation sequence, often forming long, thin needles.   Trona forms similar needles in the Bennu samples, although thousands of times smaller.

Credit

Greg Polley, Smithsonian.

Tim McCoy (right), the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History curator of meteorites and the co-lead author on the new paper, with Cari Corrigan (left) sein a scanning electron microscopy lab in the museum’s Department of Mineral Sciences examining scanning electron microscope images of a Bennu sample.

Credit

James Di Loreto, Smithsonian.

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The Moon is not as “geologically dead” as previously thought, new study reveals



A UMD geologist helped develop advanced dating methods to track geological changes on the far side of the moon and found evidence of relatively recent activity.




University of Maryland

Aitken mare ridge 

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Close up of a mare ridge near the Aitken impact crater.

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Credit: Smithsonian Institution, University of Maryland



Scientists have studied the moon’s surface for decades to help piece together its complex geological and evolutionary history. Evidence from the lunar maria (dark, flat areas on the moon filled with solidified lava) suggested that the moon experienced significant compression in its distant past. Researchers suspected that large, arching ridges on the moon’s near side were formed by contractions that occurred billions of years ago—concluding that the moon’s maria has remained dormant ever since. 

However, a new study reveals that what lies beneath the lunar surface may be more dynamic than previously believed. Two Smithsonian Institution scientists and a University of Maryland geologist discovered that small ridges located on the moon’s far side were notably younger than previously studied ridges on the near side. Their findings were published in The Planetary Science Journal on January 21, 2025. 

“Many scientists believe that most of the moon’s geological movements happened two and a half, maybe three billion years ago,” said Jaclyn Clark, an assistant research scientist in UMD’s Department of Geology. “But we're seeing that these tectonic landforms have been recently active in the last billion years and may still be active today. These small mare ridges seem to have formed within the last 200 million years or so, which is relatively recent considering the moon’s timescale.” 

Using advanced mapping and modeling techniques, the team found 266 previously unknown small ridges on the moon’s far side. The ridges typically appeared in groups of 10 to 40 in volcanic regions that likely formed 3.2 to 3.6 billion years ago in narrow areas where there may be underlying weaknesses in the moon’s surface, according to the researchers. To estimate the age of these small ridges, the researchers used a technique called crater counting. They found that the ridges were notably younger than other features in their surroundings.

“Essentially, the more craters a surface has, the older it is; the surface has more time to accumulate more craters,” Clark explained. “After counting the craters around these small ridges and seeing that some of the ridges cut through existing impact craters, we believe these landforms were tectonically active in the last 160 million years.”

Interestingly, Clark noted that the far-side ridges were similar in structure to ones found on the moon’s near side, which suggests that both were created by the same forces, likely a combination of the moon’s gradual shrinking and shifts in the lunar orbit. The Apollo missions detected shallow moonquakes decades ago; the new findings suggest that these small ridges might be related to similar seismic activity. Learning more about the evolution of the lunar surface could have important implications for the logistics of future moon missions.

“We hope that future missions to the moon will include tools like ground penetrating radar so researchers can better understand the structures beneath the lunar surface,” Clark said. “Knowing that the moon is still geologically dynamic has very real implications for where we’re planning to put our astronauts, equipment and infrastructure on the moon.”

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The paper, “Recent Tectonic Deformation of the Lunar Far Side, Maria and South Pole Aitken Basin,” was published in The Planetary Science Journal on January 21, 2025. 


lunar maria diagram 

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