NASA Science Live: Asteroid Bennu Originated from World with Ingredients and Conditions for Life

Material from Asteroid Bennu is revealing that a lost world fostered the building blocks of life…with an unexpected twist. Join experts as they dive into the recent findings from the asteroid sample NASA’s OSIRIS-REx spacecraft brought to Earth in September 2023.

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Welcome to NASA Science Live. I'm your host Tahira Allen. Today, we're going to talk to experts about the big news that scientists have detected the molecular building blocks of life in samples from asteroid Bennu, which were brought back to Earth in 2023 by NASA's OSIRIS-REx spacecraft. What's really exciting here is that the discovery of an environment that would have allowed for these molecules to flourish were also seen. So but more on that soon.

This is your chance to interact with NASA experts and have your questions answered in real time. So send them in using the hashtag. Ask NASA in the comments wherever you're watching. In September 2023, NASA's OSIRIS-REx spacecraft returned to Earth carrying material it collected from asteroid Bennu. One reason Bennu was selected for our sample return was due to its composition.

After initial study by the spacecraft, we found the asteroid to be rich in carbon based molecules like organics, which is the stuff of life. Bennu is also a primitive asteroid that serves as a time capsule for preserving materials from the dawn of the Solar System. Since the sample has returned, scientists have been studying the captured materials in labs on Earth. Now, their findings show that Bennu comes from a wet world that formed in the coldest regions of the solar system, likely beyond the orbit of Saturn and nearly 4. 6 billion years ago.

Scientists were surprised to find that the asteroid sample held such a complete library of minerals that precipitated from the evaporation of salty water, many of which are similar to minerals found from dried, briny lakes on Earth like Lake Ceres in California's Mojave Desert. We are keeping an eye on the questions pouring in online and will bring them straight to our experts live on air later on in the show. We also have experts in the comments standing by to answer your questions in real time. So let's jump right in. With us now is Doctor Danny Glavin.

He is the OSIRIS-REx sample organics lead and senior scientist at NASA Goddard. We also have Professor Sara Russell. She is a cosmic mineralogist at the Natural History History Museum in London. Thank you both so much for being here with us today, and congratulations on the discoveries in this sample. I think times it really is.

So before we jump in to the exciting times, can you tell us a little bit about your roles? Danny, why don't you go first? Yeah. So I'm Danny Glavin, I work at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, and I'm leading the Sample Organics analysis team, which is a group of about 60 scientists from around the world who've been looking at these these pristine, precious samples from space is just amazing. And, Sarah, so my name is Sarah Russell.

And, my day job is looking at meteorites in the Natural History Museum in London. But I've been part of the mineralogy team, which, again, is a team of scientists from around the world who've been looking at what Bennu's made of. Very cool job. Thank you both so much for being here with us. So let's get into the main topic of today's show.

And that is the asteroid sample brought to Earth by the OSIRIS-REx spacecraft. Now, there are two big things here, right? Scientists found the key ingredients for life in the sample, but they also found an environment that is really conducive to fostering the type of chemical reactions that we know produce living things. So that's huge. Can Sarah, can you both explain to us really the significance of these findings, but also why together they mean so much?

Yeah. So when we looked at Bennu, we were expecting it to be full of water. And and it is. So it's made mostly of clay minerals, which capture water in their structure. But what we weren't expecting to find was that it also contains tiny minerals of salts.

So that includes sodium chloride, which you use on your chips. Table salt. Oh, cool. And also, carbonates and sulfates and phosphates. We found this whole range of different salty materials.

And we think that these formed from a part of water or pods of water that would have been under the ground of Bennu's parent body. And this water would have slowly evaporated away to leave behind these salts. But this salty water is a really exciting environment, because that's where you have the potential to be able to make organic molecules. And Danny. Okay.

With the organics. Yeah. So I mean, one of the incredible findings here is that we found literally the chemical building blocks of life. We found 14 of the 20 amino acids used to build proteins, and all five nucleus bases of the that make up the genetic code and DNA and RNA. And what's exciting is the combination that we're finding these these these chemical building blocks, but also these salty brines and these environments are like places that we think life could have started on the early Earth and these evaporating, salty lakes.

So this, this, this is these are just incredible samples to look at the prebiotic chemistry that may have led to life on Earth. And so to focus on these molecules you just mentioned. So we found the building blocks of proteins and we found the building blocks of DNA and RNA. You know, have we found these before? What's the significance in this discovery?

Yeah. So we actually have found a lot of these molecules in meteorites have been looking at these for the last 30 years. And but one of the big frustrations for me with meteorites is that they've, they've they've been contaminated. You know, these things fall through the atmosphere. They get heated, they hit the ground.

They're immediately exposed to to terrestrial contamination. And so you're never quite sure if what you're looking at is real. Well, with Bennu, we have samples now, 4. 5 billion year old asteroid samples that were protected by a heat shield coming in. So it didn't experience the heat.

They were protected from Earth's biology, contained. And, you know, we're finding these building blocks. So, you know, we have higher confidence in these results. Now we can believe them. We trust that what we're looking at is extraterrestrial organic matter.

And it's out there right now. Yeah. It's just so cool to think about. So, Sarah, can you actually take us back now, like almost 4. 6 billion years back to business parent body.

You know, what have we learned about that environment now from these samples? Yes. So Bennu is like a time capsule from which we can learn about the whole 4. 5 billion years of solar system history. And we think that Bennu formed probably in the outermost part of the solar system, and now everything in the solar system condensed from a cloud of dust and gas.

So most of it went in to form the sun in the center. But then this material also condensed to form the planets and also the minor bodies like the asteroids and comets. So Bennu would have formed from this dusty cloud, of material which would have included ice as well. And after it formed, would the ice would have melted, it would have been gently heated by a little bit of radioactivity that was inside the body. And so the ice melted and that, then interacted with the rock and produced this whole new suite of minerals that we see today.

So that was Bennu's parent body. Then at some point, it also got, moved. Yeah, injected into the inner solar system, first the asteroid belt and eventually, to the near Earth place where we see it today. And what we see today is basically a rubble pile asteroid, so is quite small at 20 500m across. And it's basically made up of boulders, just gently, sort of stuck together.

So these are just, remnants of impacts that went into its original bigger body. And so, Danny, how could these building blocks have arrived on Bennu? Yeah. Informed and informed. Yeah.

I mean, so we just heard from Sarah about the melting of these ices. And one of the really interesting things that we found, actually, this was a big surprise, is that the Bennu samples came, have a lot of ammonia, you know, ammonia is the stuff you smell. And when you clean your windows, right? Yeah. Spray.

It's pungent, but ammonia is is also an important building block to form amino acids in nuclear bases. But it needs water to do that, right. So the ammonia can react with things to make these amino acids. So the fact that we're seeing these brines melted liquid water and we have these high ammonia concentration ions is really again pointing towards an outer solar system origin where the ammonia ice was stable. And again, this environment where we can get this really complex organic chemistry, because of these, these liquid brines.

Yeah, absolutely. This is so fascinating to think about. And, you know, to provide some context to these discoveries and what they mean. Here's what you need to know about the molecules of life. How?

How? All right, so we got to break down on the building blocks of life right now. Let's break down this environment. You know, I understand that there was mineral evidence of this briny, salty liquid for Bennu's parent body, which could have been this perfect broth to cook up these molecules of life that Danny's been talking about. How do we know that?

Have we seen this anywhere before? Yes. So, when we saw this whole sequence of salts, it reminded us a little bit of, lakebed on Earth. So, like, so like in California, where the lake itself has evaporated away and left behind this whole sequence of different minerals. And so this was a great analog for us.

Yeah. That's Bennu, because we found a lot of exactly the same minerals. So this really helped us kind of visualize what was going on inside Bennu. That's great. And I mean, Danny, we couldn't have really gotten this kind of analysis, right, unless we had these samples back here on Earth.

Oh, yeah. There's no question. I mean, part of the power of these sample return missions is that you can bring these samples back, and you have the world's instruments, right? To work with, state of the art instrumentation. We did make measurements at asteroid Bennu, and we had hints that there were clay minerals in the water.

We have it. We even had hints that there was organic carbon present on the surface. But we didn't know the form. We didn't know where amino acids or other chemical building blocks. Now we know.

And that's because we had these samples in the lab, and we can use state of the art instrumentation to analyze them. And also these salts are very, very delicate. And, if they came in a meteorite and became exposed to the atmosphere, then they would quickly dissolve away. So it was really important to have this very pristine sample that's been beautifully curated at the Johnson Space Center in Houston and kept in a nitrogen only atmosphere and not being exposed to the Earth's atmosphere. This is so fascinating.

And so I'm going to pause, because we've got a ton of questions coming in from our viewers online. And if you are just tuning in with us, remember, you can submit your questions in the into the comment stream wherever you're watching by using ask NASA. So let's jump into our first question. We have freedom on X. Who wants to know where did these ingredients come from in the early solar system?

Sarah, Danny. Well, I can I can talk for the inorganic, ingredients. So, all of the elements that make up Earth, apart from the hydrogen, were made inside ancient stars that were ancestors to our own. So there's this whole incredible story about how we got to be on. We really are star stuff.

That's amazing stuff. Exactly. So at the beginning, if you go back to the beginning of the universe, the Big Bang made a load of hydrogen. And that formed into stars. And they were factories for all of the other elements that we that we have.

So ultimately, that's where this stuff came from. And as, as billion Year went on, more and more elements were created and dust was formed around stars that was floating around and eventually became part of our solar system. And Danny, when did the organics come in? Yeah. So this is actually an interesting question.

We're trying to tease this part of it out, but turns out that some of these ISIS, he had this disk of ice and dust, you can get some chemistry happening on these ice grains for forming silly molecules. Formaldehyde simple. Nothing is complex as we're seeing in Bennu. But these ice is, again, they get incorporated into the parent body, and then you have this radioactive heating, which can drive this additional chemistry. So you can form more complex structures, like the amino acids and the nuclear bases that we're seeing.

We even have evidence that some of these ices may have come from the interstellar medium. You know, a different solar system. And we're. Yeah, I mean, so it's actually a very complex story. But the idea is that we we started out with very simple compounds in the beginning, and then we developed this complexity with time into.

My next question is from, a user on Twitch who asks, what tests did you run on your samples and how long did it take? So I think this is a great one for both of you, because did you both run different tests? We did. Okay. Very different.

All right. Cool. Well, let's hear about it. Sarah. Yes.

So what we did was, we analyzed the Bennu sample grain by grain. So the first little sample we got was basically kind of fine grain, like the, grain size, about a pieces of sugar. So really tiny. So it would pick up each little grain with tweezers. And first we CT scanned it.

So this is a way like the CT scans in hospital. You can look at the inside structure, of a grain. And then we looked at it on the electron microscope, which gave us the chance to look at what minerals were there and how they interacted with each other, so we could tell which one form first and which one formed after. So that helped us build up the story about Bennu. Wow.

And, Danny, what about your side? Yeah. So we made Bennu tea in our lab. We literally took some of the Bennu samples and put them in water, sealed them up at 100°C and, you know, boiled it and, yeah, extracted the organic compounds, just like making tea. And then we analyze this liquid, with a variety of different mass spectrometer, techniques.

And these basically measure the mass of each organic compound to very high precision. And from that you can identify what the molecule is. And actually in some of the in this tea, we're finding a very complex soup, over 10,000 nitrogen containing organic molecules. So we're literally just scratching the surface with these detection hurdles. It's you know, we've seen this in other other meteorites before, the complexity.

But as I said, we're just getting started with these Bennu samples. It's going to take a lot of time to, to figure out, you know, what all these molecules are. And so, Sarah, I know you all had the samples at the Natural History Museum in London. Right? But these samples have been sent all over the world.

Is that correct? Absolutely. We're part of this huge team. On is it four continents? Five continents.

I lost count, okay, but most of the continents anyway. Yeah. And, and we all have been working together, so having lots of telecoms to update each other on, on our results, that's been one of the amazing things about this mission, this being it being able to work with these people all over the world. That is so cool and so okay, I have our next question from Gold Eagle on YouTube. Who wants to know?

Is this the first time that an asteroid has been found to have amino acids? Danny. So, no, actually the first, sample. So the Hayabusa mission, which, was a Jaxa Japanese, space agency mission brought back, tiny, a tiny amount of sample from asteroid Itokawa. And we actually found a few amino acids in these tiny grains that we showed were non-pro, 18 amino acids and, you know, indicating an extraterrestrial origin.

And then more recently, Hayabusa2, the second Japanese mission, return samples from REU goo. About six grams, I think, or so of material. And again, some of these amino acids were also found in those samples. So no, this isn't the first time, we are seeing a greater diversity of organic compounds in the Bennu samples, so that's pretty exciting. But I think really, it's this ability to compare.

We now have three asteroid samples. Yeah. And and the science really the value here is, is being able to compare these samples to one another. I mean, this is a really excitin And so that's amazing. Sarah, I have a great follow up for you.

Brad on YouTube asks, were there any discoveries of unknown substances in the asteroid? I know earlier you talked about knowing there was going to be Clay. Yes. Yeah. There were some minerals that have not been seen in meteorites before, but but have been seen on Earth like, sodium carbonate, for example, which is a mineral called trona.

And then I think maybe what might be unique is we found, particular phosphate. It's, sodium magnesium phosphate, which is actually fairly abundant in Bennu. And we hadn't seen that before. So subsequently, it has been found on ragu and, and a few meteorites as well. So, it's not only found in Bennu.

Any surprises for you, Danny? And yours? Yeah. So, yeah, we talked about the ammonia. Yeah.

So the ammonia levels were really high in the Venus samples. About 100 times what you might find in your backyard soil. Higher than what we found in Riga and higher than in most meteorites. But again, you know, the fact that we're seeing these, these building blocks in all of these samples, right, suggests that this stuff is widespread. Yeah.

I mean, these these building blocks are not just limited to Bennu, and they were all over the solar system. And I think that's just, you know, the idea that these things could have led to life not only on Earth, but potentially elsewhere. That's that's what's getting me excited right now. It is really excited, exciting. And for the, brines as well.

We think we see these in other places in the solar system. So, the moon of Saturn and Solidus has got plumes coming out of it that, we think may be similar to the salty brine. And the biggest asteroid in the asteroid belt series has got some white patches that we think might be salts as well. So, absolutely, we think these things that we're seeing on Bennu, we might be seeing across the solar system. And just to follow up quickly, we're also seeing the ammonia o ammonia salts on series and, and and the solidus plumes.

So you have the again the raw ingredients for some of these building blocks. So yeah. So I have a question from Sue Gerd on ECS. Who wants to know what is the likelihood of contamination before mission launch or analysis? Any take that or oh, I'll start new carry on.

Yeah. But yeah. So contamination is something that was really important to us to try to, keep to a minimum. And it's something that we have been tracking really closely, throughout the mission, because one of the really important things was to try to get back a pristine sample. And, so we put all sorts of things in play to make sure that that happens, including having what we call witness plates, which, witness whatever the asteroid witnesses, so we can monitor them and see if they've become contaminated.

So there's several things in place to make sure that we keep the contamination to a minimum and where contamination happens, that we understand it so that we can then remove that from our analysis. Yeah. You know, I'll just follow up and say, you know, it's impossible to keep something perfectly clean. You know, we're sending a spacecraft built by humans in this space, and it's impossible to completely eliminate contamination. But as you said, we've got witness plates to track it through all stages.

My colleague Jason Durkin was the contamination control lead, and he. You spent a lot of time working with the engineers, making sure got gotta have this witness plate here. And we got to analyze it, and we were actually tracking the amino acid, contribution on these plates, through assembly and didn't find much. I mean, even something like nylon, you know, that's a source of amino acid. And so there was a big push to just eliminate nylon completely.

Don't let the sampler head touch nylon. And we succeeded actually, in making these, these pretty big changes to to do that. And we're reaping the benefits now right. Yeah I understand I mean, didn't we build a whole new sample analysis labs for these samples on Earth? Well, there's a new curation curation that was built especially for a Sirus Rex.

Oh, yeah. Absolutely. Thank you both. And so our next question is someone on ECS who wants to know, did the samples include polypeptides that were chiral, pure or so I think this is this is a little technical. So, yeah, that's an amazing question.

Think so? Let's step back a little bit and talk about chirality. Okay. So amino acids can come in two forms just like your hands and their non super imposible mirror images. So if you try to take your hands like this, you see my thumbs are sticking out.

Right. And so amino acids have that kind of reality. Handedness, mirror image forms. All life on Earth is based only on the left handed form. And we still don't know why.

This is actually a big mystery, because life could have evolved with right handed proteins, and it could have functioned just as well. So big mystery in the origin of life to get at the question about peptides. So peptides are actually chains of amino acids that take two amino acids, link them together, they form these long chains. And indeed life biology on Earth, you know, it's predominantly the left handed form of these peptides. Now, we haven't found any peptides yet.

We're looking carefully. We have a much larger sample now. So we're looking for these that we call them polymers or peptides. And yeah if we find them absolutely. We'll be measuring the chirality no question about it in DNA.

I've got a good follow up for you. It is one of our followers on X who wants to know, did you find other basic building blocks of life that have shown up in the sample, or meteorites? Do you want to talk about the phosphate? Oh yeah, we could talk about the phosphate. Yeah.

So one of the reasons we're really excited to find phosphate in Bennu and quite a high proportion, is because phosphate is also really essential to life. So it makes the backbone of the DNA molecule. So yeah. So it's really cool that so these brines not only could have helped the organic, reactions go along, but also what asteroids like Bennu hit the Earth. It would have delivered not only the organic material on the water, but also this other bio essential material like phosphate as well.

That's great. That's incredible. And so one thing I want to clear up as well, you know, in this finding, we have found the key ingredients that life needs. And we have found the broth that could, you know, spark the chemical reactions for the emergence of life. But we didn't we have no evidence that they haven't seen the spark yet.

We haven't, I guess not sparked. And so yeah, we haven't seen any life. Yeah. Yeah. Well it sounds like we've got a lot to look forward to though in these samples as well.

Absolutely. So, we actually have okay. We were just talking about carnality and, the handedness of, of molecules. We have Peter on YouTube who wants to know why did these molecules go left, which I now we see that they can go left or right. But why.

What was the assumption I guess before these. Yeah. So that that's, that's a so it was Peter. Yeah. It's a great, great question.

I mean and this is, this is really the million dollar question that we're still trying to work out now prior to this, this mission, we had some evidence from meteorites, that there was this excess of some of the protein, amino acids, the left handed form, up to 60% more in some cases of the left handed. So actually, I was personally expecting when we when we brought these Bennu samples back because it had a composition very similar to these meteorites that we would also find left handed excesses. But but we didn't, you know, we found that there were equal mixtures. And, you know, when I saw this, I was actually kind of depressed. Yeah.

I, I've been working on about 20 years, and now let's just flush it down the toilet. I guess that's honestly how I felt. But again, this is why we we explore. This is why we do missions like OSIRIS-REx to get closer to the truth. And, you know, again, I this is, you know, early days.

It's one sample. We're going to be working on other samples to look at chirality. But right now I think we can say that the origin of we call biological homo chirality, left handed based protein life is it's still a mystery. Yeah. And I don't know if you mentioned this earlier, but what chiral does life on Earth take?

It is mainly left handed, right. So it's it's left handed amino acids and right handed sugars that make up. You mentioned the phosphate the sugar phosphate backbone. So it's it's actually left and right. So I all you left handers out there we're not you know, dominate in the universe.

Right handers have a role to and the sugars okay. Great. Thank you. So I got a good question for you. We have Rashi on YouTube who wants to know what is what was the age of the sample collected, and how do we know that?

Oh, that is a great question. So we can, age, date things using radioactive isotopes. So there's certain isotopes. For example, uranium is a radioactive element, and it decays through a series of intermediaries to, to lead isotopes. And by looking at how much of these lead isotopes have built up, we can say how old it is.

And the age dating of the components of Bennu is still a work in progress. So we're still working on that. But, we think it's likely to be the same age as, similar meteorites that we have in our collection. So that would put it right at the beginning of the solar system. So 4.

5 billion years of older. Wow. I mean, it's crazy to even try to think about a timescale that long ago. Yeah. I mean, anything older than the Earth, it's like, wow.

I mean, it really is the fact that we have materials, you know, that sustain materialistic materials at all. And we can actually look at this chemistry in this environment before life even started. Yeah. It's incredible. We can't do that with rocks on Earth.

Right. They've all been processed by plate tectonics. And the heating that chemical record on Earth has been wiped out. And so we're getting that now, that prebiotic record with Daniel, it's it's incredible. It is incredible.

It's real privilege to look at this material that's older than the Earth itself. Yeah. Danny, I have a clarifying question from, you know, a conversation we were having earlier. Someone on YouTube asks, have they felt like have specifically have they found any living organisms on any meteorites? The only living organisms on meteorites are from the Earth.

Yeah. And if anyone knows otherwise, let me know. Yeah. But yeah, that's again. And that's, that's the problem, right?

Is that these meteorites, as soon as they hit, hit, the soil, you know, hit the Earth that they become rapidly contaminated with, with biology. And so I think you were touching on this a little bit earlier, but Adam on YouTube asks with these findings, how confident can we be that other bodies in the solar system, you know, have these contain these organics or these environments that might be conducive to, yeah, cooking them up. Yeah. So we're becoming increasingly confident that these are likely to be really widespread processes because yeah, we do see some evidence for this on other bodies like Enceladus and that, you know, water is a very abundant material in our system, and so is organic material. And so it just makes sense that, if it happens on Bennu, it's likely to happen across our solar system.

Yeah. And even, you know, other solar systems. So I talked about these icy, you know, ice grains. It could be from the interstellar medium. There's really nothing to suggest that the basic building block chemistry is unique to our solar system.

So this is this is exciting. You know, as we explore exoplanets, you know, you know, it should be looking for life there as well. Definitely. So we have universe on YouTube who asks other than than chemicals that contain life. So I think they're talking about like, organic molecules.

What was the rarest chemical or substance you guys have found on the asteroid sample? We have found, yeah, lots of fairly rare, substances in Bennu. So, so one of the exciting things for me was finding, material that that was floating around in the protoplanetary disk before, Benny's parent body accreted. So we do find some tiny grains of minerals like, at night and out, for example, which are very, very rare in Bennu. And we think these may have been among the oldest grains.

And they survived all of this water reaction. Wow. So they can give us a glimpse back to what the protoplanetary disk was like at that time. So so that's a that that's sort of my favorite rare thing. Anything rare on the organics side.

Well, actually, I was, I was I was going to say no. But now that I think about it, you know, we actually found, 33 amino acids in total detected in the Bennu samples. 14 were protein amino acids, but the other 19 were non protein not found in biology. And in fact we're finding some amino acids that don't even occur naturally on the Earth. They truly are rare.

So these nine protein amino acids. So have you seen them in meteorites before. We have seen them in meteorites. But I just wanted to make that point. You know, we're seeing the building blocks of life, but we're also seeing these other similar compounds that for whatever reason, weren't weren't used by life.

So that's a whole another mystery in and of itself. Why did life choose those 20 years when there were hundreds of amino acids available? And so are the amino acids you're talking about from what we know, only formed in space or material that has come from space. Well, we can make them in the lab, of course. But yeah, the fact that these some of these really rare non protein amino acids, were formed in these is really an interesting question.

You know, why? You know, of course biology has taken over on the earth and that's why the 20 are the most common ones here. But, it's really interesting to think that a lot more was probably available early on in that prebiotic soup. And why did why did life choose the 20? I don't have the answer to that.

Yeah, so much had to have gone right. It seems like, for us to be here today. So I have Ion Riddle on X, who wants to know? Could it have been Venus parent asteroid that struck Earth 65 million years ago? It's a tough one.

That is a tough one. So there is some evidence. So that so this is the impact that crashed into Earth and was responsible for killing the dinosaurs. And most of other life on Earth at that time. And there is some evidence that it's an outer solar system body.

So it may have been something, related to Bennu, but we don't know. I believe we don't know enough about it to know exactly whether, it was how similar it was to Bennu. Yeah, yeah, I'll just make one quick follow up to that, actually, there's these boundary. They call CT. Maybe it has a new name, but, that 66, 65 million year old boundary.

We actually found some of these rare I call the non protein amino acids alpha amino acid butyric acid. I know it's a mouthful I believe. But that was found in high concentration. No way long with iridium at that layer. Again suggesting that you know, one of these asteroids possibly like Bennu hit and not only killed the dinosaurs, but delivered, yeah, amino acids to the Earth.

So. Yeah. Wow. Well, I have a great question for for both of you. It's from Coyne on Twitch.

Who wants to know? When you were kids, did you one day think that you were going to be analyzed life related samples from space. So, for me, no. Yeah. I mean, I will be honest with you, I was never very into biology, but what I was interested in was geology.

So I used to collect rocks and I was also into space. So I loved watching things like this. I loved hearing about NASA missions and, yeah, I really kind of devoured everything that was going on in space exploration. So I feel really lucky now to be involved in this, this space mission. And it's been it's sort of, you know, exciting twist for me.

Yeah. But, our work has kind of put us in the direction of thinking about the ingredients for life. So that's really fun. Yeah. What about you, Danny?

Yeah. The same. I mean, I couldn't have dreamed of being an astrobiologist. I didn't think I knew what that was as a kid, but I did love rocks. Just like you.

And I drew, you know, pictures of aliens and the space shuttle. And so, yeah, maybe not a big shock that I, you know, I'm now studying space rocks. But actually, in college, you know, I was I got into physics and I thought I wanted to study black holes and then something big happened. In 1996, there was an announcement of the Allen Hills 8401 Martian meteorite that was found in Antarctica, reported to contain evidence of, Martian life. And I think at that moment, you know, that changed everything for me.

Yeah. I'm like, just the idea that meteorites could be transporting the building blocks, you know, seeding, you know, life throughout the. So I was hooked. I'm like, I've got to get into astrobiology now. I got to study these rocks.

Wow. I got to look for evidence of life. And, So, yeah, I mean, I hope some of the viewers are finding inspiration from this announcement. And, you know, maybe this will encourage you to to get into this field. We need more people working on it.

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. I mean, it's answering some of humanity's biggest questions. And so one thing that I think is really cool about this mission is that we are saving some samples, right? Some are being specially, you know, like contained for the next generation of scientists and astrobiologists and mineralogist to sample with, you know, cutting edge technology as well. Absolutely.

So we've only used a tiny fraction of the hunt. We happen to know how much of the fraction has been used. Oh, God. No. It's okay.

Yeah. No. It's very our friends in the Commons, they got us are experts in the Commons. Can help us out with that. Yeah.

I'm not great with numbers like that, but, Yeah still most of it is available and, and that's fantastic. And some of it's being, deep frozen so kept, at cryogenic temperatures to make sure that it stays super pristine. And it'll be available for scientists in the next years and the next centuries, even. Wow. Answer their own questions.

So the one number I do know is that more than 70% of the mass returned, and we returned about four ounces, 120g. More than 70% of that will be saved for the future generations. So like you mentioned, the one we've got a sample 7. 5g sealed up in a freezer, -80. And this might be opened 50 years from now, like you recently did with the Apollo samples.

Oh, yeah. I wasn't even born when they collected the samples. And now, you know, we're analyzing them. So the same will be true with these. There'll be people that aren't even born yet that will be studying these, samples with with even technologies that don't even exist, answering questions they even know how to ask.

I mean, it is it's the gift that keeps on giving. It really is. Wow. That's beautiful to think about. Yeah.

So back to the sample. We have Angel lady on Twitch who asks, could you explain the process of how the OSIRIS-REx spacecraft collected and returned this sample? Right. Okay. So yes.

So the SARS spacecraft spent two years, getting data from Bennu going around it. And getting a fantastic sort of view of what the asteroid was made of. And then we very carefully selected which site we'd like to sample. And on the day of the sampling, this, came out. Touch the surface.

It's called a touch and go mechanism. Oh here's a video of it on the screen. That's fantastic. So the I believe that's a live video. Like an actual video.

Yeah. That is an actual video. And so when the spacecraft was designed, we were expecting it to be quite a hard surface, but actually it's very, very porous. It's like a, a ball pit. And the arm went straight through, and managed to sample, this fantastic, collection of material from the surface on the subsurface and then retracted back with its goodies.

Yeah. What a cool concept for a mission. So we actually we have Sam on YouTube who has a great follow up to this. They ask, do we know if the asteroid is hollow or was it really just this, like big rubble pile that if you keep going into, there would be no end? Yeah.

I mean, it's definitely not hollow. You know, it's not like, you know, I don't know shell shell, it's a rubble power. So it's these loose, you know, boulders that are loosely held together. You know, we plunged in. That was totally not predicted.

I mean, fortunately, the back way. Thrusters, they were on timers. They got us out of there. Because if not, you can expect a very. What have swallowed the spacecraft.

Wow. That was actually a very, very scary moment. But everything worked out, and so, yeah, it's not hollow, but there are a lot of voids, a lot of void space in between these boulders. Yeah. Was there anything that.

I mean, you said it was a scary moment. Was there anything unexpected with this mission, the sample return? Oh, well, it wasn't. Yeah. I mean, there were lots of things expected.

So one thing that we found is that Bennu's what's called an active asteroid. So every so often, there'll be like a shoot of a gas coming off from the surface of it. And that was kind of exciting, but also scary because we worried the health of the spacecraft. So. Yeah.

Exactly. Yeah. We're moving slow. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So there was that.

And then when the sample, mechanism came back, it was slightly leaking. So some bits were coming out. And so that meant it had to be stowed really quickly to make sure that we could keep the sample safe. Yeah. That was you remember those the images, the video of particles coming out of the tagsam head, I think.

Yeah. Yeah, there it is. Oh, and I'll never forget I remember the Pi trailer out of saying at this moment, oh my God, every particle of somebody's PhD thesis. But yeah, we lose it. And so yeah, it was, it was intense.

But again, you know, we got 120g back more than two times. Wow. Mission requirements. So we still got a bounty. Yeah.

We material. Our next question is from Sam who's on Twitch, who asks what are the next steps regarding this research and findings? Well, for me, one of the big questions is we still we we know that there were these brines, but we don't know very much about the timing. So we expect that the brines perform very early in the solar system, maybe just a few million years after Bennu's parent body accreted. But we don't know for sure.

So I'd love to know more about the whole timing, about the alteration of Bennu. That's my my big ask if the next few months. And what about you? What about your research? Yeah.

So we we you know, we talked about going from the building blocks of the amino acids to more complex structures, structures like proteins or nucleic acid like molecules. And so we do now have a much larger sample of Bennu, about six grams, that we're going to use to look for these more complex polymers. The peptides, you know, the amino acids that form chains and maybe compounds that look more like DNA or nucleotides. So we'll see what we find. I think that if they're they're they're present at very low concentrations, which is why we need more sample to find them.

But we're going to look with the best instruments we have on Earth to look for these. Yeah. And both of your two teams be continuing your research. Or is this is this analysis that might be done by another group of scientists, or will you still have your hands on the on the samples and be looking at them? Well, the mission finishes in September 2025.

So at that point the sample analysis team, it's work is done. We give the samples back to the Johnson Space Center. But at that point or even at the moment, anyone can request a sample, to use for their research. So if we have outstanding questions, we can just put in a request to have a bit of sample to work with. Wow.

Yeah, it's pretty exciting that. And these samples are literally open request that anybody in the science community that, you know, has a, a technique and a good idea and has demonstrated on meteorites, right. Yeah. Can can ask NASA Johnson Space Center for. Yeah, write a proposal and request sample.

That's wonderful. Our next question is from Cookie Jar on Twitch. Who wants to know? You know, from these findings what we've learned. Does that mean that the early building blocks of life that started on Earth could have come from asteroids?

Danny? I mean, I think we can't rule that out. I mean, this is really the big theory of this. We call it the genius delivery theory. Actually, there's a theory.

You know, life on Earth started because of, asteroids like Bennu and the fragments, meteorites, interplanetary dust particles that delivered this organic material, the building blocks. So I think that the analyzes that we've done at Bennu have certainly adding more credibility to that theory. But, you know, the bottom line is, we don't know, we can't go back in time 4 billion years ago to see exactly how it started. But it's it's looking pretty good that at least asteroids had some role in bringing the building blocks to Earth. And, Danny, I have a follow up from Ivan Levin's on X, who asks, so the so the evidence is leading towards us not being alone in the universe.

What would you say to that? I mean, yeah, I mean, this again, these these chemical building blocks of life, the stuff that makes you and I up, all our viewers, we're all made of the same stuff, is being formed in space and is spread throughout the solar system. And not only the organic compounds, but the environments, these these, these briny, salty, you know, fluids were there to, to, to even drive more complex chemistry. So I'm definitely becoming more optimistic, in our search for life, even in our own solar system, because the building blocks are there everywhere in. Sarah, my next question is from for you, from, one of our followers on X, who wants to know?

Do experts believe that these organic materials or these environments reside all over the asteroid belt? Yes. So one of the reasons we chose Bennu was because we thought that it was going to be rich in water and carbon, and it is. So it's a type of, asteroid called a C-type or carbon rich type. And that sort of asteroid is actually pretty common around, our solar system.

So, absolutely, these things we expect will be pretty widespread across our solar system. And, we have K powers on Twitch who asks? One, was there water on the asteroid on which we know that there is but two, you know, is it common for asteroids to have water? It is pretty common. Yeah.

So, yeah. So this sort of asteroid, the C-type asteroid, one of its characteristics is that we think it does have water, and that's something we can often see even from space, because it has a particular, signature that, only water has. So we can see that many of these asteroids do contain water, not liquid water. I would that's going to be my follow up question. No, but, water in the form of clay.

So basically they're like a ball of mud. Yeah. But there certainly are environments in the air. So, you know, we talked about Enceladus. Oh, yeah.

Sure. These are icy moons that we believe have oceans. Oh for sure. After the asteroid, maybe even Ceres. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And so there are clearly environments that that may even have life today. We just have to go there and and look for it. Yes. Yeah. Lots to explore into our next question.

Danny, this is for you on X. From one of our users on X. He wants to know did you find and forgive me as I pronounce this, pyrimidines or Pyrenees or other basic building blocks of life. Yeah. So I think it's purines and pyrimidines.

I, your engine permitting. And indeed. Yeah. So the five nuclear bases, you know, we found, you know, adenine siding, cytosine, guanine, thymine, uracil. Right.

All five and, cytosine, thymine and oh, there we go. And I slide so I don't. And your cell are what are known are pyrimidine. These are pyrimidines. And then the pure innate purines adenine and guanine.

You see there. So there are different structures. Opinions are a little larger. Right. They have these two rings whereas the pyrimidines have single rings.

And again, all of these have been discovered in the samples. And what is the significance of these molecules. So when we're thinking about life and building blocks of life. Yeah I mean like we said, these are these are the genetic components of DNA. This is the genetic code, right?

The components of that. So that's the significance. I mean, we don't we don't exist. Biology doesn't exist as we know it without this ability to replicate, imperfectly and evolve, with DNA and RNA and nucleic acids. So this is fundamental fundamental chemistry here, and it's mind boggling that, again, it's found in samples of an asteroid that is currently in space right now.

And so incredible to think about. Yeah. Our next question is from Sky Cracker on Twitch. Who wants to know where can we read about your research if we're interested in learning more? That's a great question, Sarah.

That is a great question. So, Danny's team and our team, just published papers, that came out yesterday in Nature and Nature astronomy. So you can read the original research there, and, it's open, open access. Open access. Anyone?

Great. Anybody can. Yep. Yes. And, NASA have, picked it up, writing some articles for lay people as well to be able to, to read.

That's wonderful. Thank you both. My next question is for Danny. So we have Dorian Gray on Twitch, who asks when talking about the building blocks of life on Bennu. Do you mean things that could have led to life or past traces of life?

Yeah. That's that. This is a really important thank you for the question. Because let's be clear, we're finding the chemical building blocks, things that could have eventually assembled together, right, to form something that's closer to life as we know it. You know, DNA, RNA, large proteins.

We're not finding those complex molecules. And we're not finding, you know, life itself. We're seeing the building blocks, and there's a long way to go, chemically speaking, to get from the building blocks that we see to to life itself, how that happened, how long that took. That's a that's a that's kind of an open question. Yeah.

That we're trying to figure out. And we have next for Sarah. We have someone on Twitch who wants to know why was Bennu chosen for the mission? I know you hit a little bit on this earlier, but I think it's a really important to drive home, especially for all the discoveries we've made from the sample. Yes.

So Bennu was chosen because firstly, it's a near-Earth asteroid. So it's, it orbits around the sun about the same distance as the Earth does. So that makes it more accessible to an asteroid? It had the right. It was in the right place at the right time.

So that's the first thing. And then secondly, we thought, we were hopeful that this was going to be full of carbon and water just from the measurements we could make, from Earth. And we wanted to pick an asteroid like that because we wanted to write the papers that where we're right now. So. Yeah.

So we managed we did pick the right asteroid that we did find one that contained water and carbon. So that was really important. And then the final special thing about Bennu is that, it actually has a very small chance of hitting the Earth in the very distant future. So that was a very small. It's small, very small, very small.

We should not be worried. Yes, but that was another reason to go and study it in more detail, to look more closely at its orbit and how that was affected by the radiation from the sun. Yeah. I think there's no chance in the next hundred years it could hit and I think in 21, 82, there's like a 0. 04% chance that it could hit in 2182.

So, I'm not going to lose that some time. But we've got yeah, yeah, we've got some time. And so I have that Opal guy on YouTube. Danny, who wants to know, are there any plans to send a mission back to Bennu in the future that I currently know that that's a good question. I think part of the thing, you know, I mentioned the the drive to explore and that's we want to go new places.

You know, we want to go to series. We want to go to comet, we want to go. And we actually have a mission now, Clipper that's going to go explore Europa. Yeah, the icy moons of Jupiter. So I think kind of the human tendency is to want to.

Yeah. See new stuff, discover new things and salad us up. Put that on the list. Yeah. And so it is.

I mean, God, there's so many places. Yeah, yeah. And so my next question is from one of our followers on Twitch who wants to know are different teams performing different tests on the sample. So for example, both of your teams performed two totally different, you know, focuses of of this sample. Do you know if that's the same for everybody that's getting a piece of Bennu?

Yes. So the way we arranged our analysis was divide up into a few teams. So there's the mineralogy team which I'm on organics team that Danny's on. Cool. And then we also have, Elements and Isotope team who's looking doing more of a deep dive into the chemistry.

And we have one a team that's looking at the physical properties, things like the density, of Bennu. And, what else do we have a team looking at the spectral properties. So that's that's comparing the data we got from the spacecraft to doing very similar techniques on Earth, because that enables us to see how correct we were in our predictions, which will help us look to other asteroids as well. So we're really studying us from every angle. Now, are your teams talking with each other?

And, you know, like, how does this all this information, I guess, come together for the bigger picture? Yeah. So I mean, communication's obviously important. You know, we all work in isolation. I mean, we went to lab, but no, we actually have the structure.

We have these working group leads. So for each of these groups that Sarah was talking about, we have a lead and we have a deputy. And actually the leads get together and talk about, you know, what we're finding. We have science team meetings. There's one, coming up, in Tucson, next month and or an end of March.

And that'll be another opportunity to discuss the results. Where do we go from here? So that's actually a really important part of this, right? We need to be communicating, sharing our results, so we can plan the next steps. Yeah.

So my next question is angel lady on Twitch who asks, are there any specific planets or moons within our solar system that you believe could harbor life based on the ingredients found in the asteroid samples? So yeah, absolutely. I think the astrobiologist should answer that. Well, we've we've talked about them already. Right.

Europa, huge ocean, icy moons of Jupiter and Enceladus, another icy moon of Saturn. And in that case, you know, it's it's actually spitting out some of this ocean material as a plume. Pretty exciting. And is it just the water on those? Yeah, there's there's a nice image of these these these plumes coming out.

So this is. Yeah, probably this stuff's derived from the subsurface ocean so. Want to sample that. Want to analyze that. What I you know it'd be an amazing discovery if I in life but I wouldn't be shocked.

I mean this is exactly the kind of environment where, where you should, you know, life could evolve. And that's so exciting too. I mean, as you mentioned, we've got Europa Clipper on its way right now. Yep. To look at the habitability of, of of that icy moon.

And so, you know more to come. Yeah, absolutely. I have one final question for you both. And that is what advice do you have to viewers who might be interested in, you know, helping NASA study other worlds like Bennu? So my advice to everyone is always to follow your heart.

And when you're thinking about your career and your career choices, it's so important to do something that you're truly passionate about. Like Katina and I are passionate about what we what we do. So absolutely just go for what you really enjoy. Yeah. But yeah, do make sure you take maths classes like this.

So that's useful for everyone in math, science in general. I guess one of the big learning moments for me, you know, and I, I went from physics to chemistry, which are very different, you know, and that was because of that Allen Hills Martian meteorite. But I think, have, you know, science background is important. Obviously, if you want to study pieces of Bennu, you should like rocks, you know, space rocks. But, yeah, again, follow your heart, you know, work hard.

You know, there are many different ways to get to where where we are now. And again, I wouldn't even never guess. Yeah. No doubt. So, Yeah.

So. Yeah. Here we are. Yeah. Well, that's great advice.

And like, thank you so much for being here on this show. And also congratulations on your discovery. I know that it has been like decades in the working right. And you have something so cool to show for. So again thank you both for your time.

You're welcome. Thank you. And thank you all to our viewers online watching today. Now, if you didn't get enough, we have another opportunity for you to speak directly with the scientists involved in the sample return that's happening tomorrow, January 31st, from 2 to 4 p. m.

Eastern on Reddit. We'll have another Q&A and you can visit reddit. com again. Argon NASA now to stay updated on Bennu science. You can follow NASA's Solar System on Instagram, Facebook, and X.

This is going to be this is one of the first studies of the asteroid material. And as we talked about earlier, there are going to be dozens of investigations going on all around the world and will continue for decades. So be on the lookout for more discoveries as the story continues to unfold. You can read all about the exciting findings from the asteroid sample on nasa. gov slash OSIRIS-REx.

Thank you and see you next time.

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