Article 6DGJX NASA Lab Hopes to Find Life's Building Blocks in Asteroid Sample

NASA Lab Hopes to Find Life's Building Blocks in Asteroid Sample

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upstart writes:

Eager scientists and a gleaming lab awaits:

A sample from the asteroid Bennu, which could be key to understanding the formation of the solar system and our own planet, is set to be analyzed at NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston after it reaches Earth in late September.

The precious cargo is currently aboard OSIRIS-REx, a US space probe launched in 2016 to Bennu, which orbits the Sun at an average distance of about 105 million miles (168 million kilometers).

Scientists will separate pieces of the rock and dust for study now, while carefully storing away the rest for future generations equipped with better technology-a practice first started during the Apollo missions to the Moon.

"We don't expect there to be anything living but (rather) the building blocks of life," Nicole Lunning, lead OSIRIS-Rex sample curator, told AFP.

[...] The spacecraft is scheduled to land in the Utah desert on September 24, carrying an estimated 8.8 ounces, or 250 grams of material-just over a cupful.

[...] The first samples brought to Earth by asteroids were carried out by Japanese probes in 2010 and 2020, with the latter found to contain uracil, one of the building blocks of RNA.

The finding lent weight to a longstanding theory that life on Earth may have been seeded from outer space when asteroids crashed into our planet carrying fundamental elements.

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