Sugars Essential for Life Discovered in NASA’s Bennu Asteroid Samples

Scientists analysing samples from NASA’s OSIRIS-REx mission have discovered sugars crucial to biological processes on Earth in material collected from Asteroid Bennu, located nearly 200 million miles away. The study, led by Yoshihiro Furukawa of Tohoku University, Japan, was published in Nature Geoscience.

The spacecraft had briefly touched Bennu’s surface five years ago to collect dust and pebbles, returning the samples to Earth on September 24, 2023. Bennu, roughly as tall as the Empire State Building, comes close to Earth every six years.

Key Scientific Findings

• Sugars crucial for biology detected:
  Researchers found five-carbon ribose and, for the first time in an extraterrestrial sample, six-carbon glucose in Bennu’s material.
• No evidence of life—yet important clues:
  While these sugars do not indicate past life, they add to a growing list of organic molecules found in Bennu samples, including amino acids, nucleobases, and carboxylic acids.
• Implications for origins of life:
  The diversity of organic compounds suggests that essential building blocks of biological molecules were widespread throughout the early solar system, potentially delivered to early Earth via asteroids.
• Role in DNA and RNA:
  Ribose and deoxyribose are key components of RNA and DNA, the molecules essential for life on Earth.

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New Material Discovered in a Second Study

• A separate paper from Berkeley scientists reports a gum-like substance in the Bennu samples — a material never before seen in space rocks.
• This sticky compound may have helped concentrate prebiotic chemicals on early Earth, further enabling life’s emergence.

About Bennu and OSIRIS-REx

• Bennu is a small, carbon-rich asteroid and the target of NASA’s first sample-return mission from an asteroid.
• OSIRIS-REx successfully collected and delivered the samples, offering unprecedented insights into the solar system’s early chemistry.