A few years after the space well built by NASA has taken samples from the benu asteroid, it begins to reveal its sequence, with the study of samples away from any form of terrestrial contamination.
Huge progress has been made in understanding asteroids. Photo shutterstock
The research has shown the presence of minerals and amino acids indispensable for the occurrence of life, informs two studies published on Wednesday, according to AFP, quoted by Agerpres.
In 2020, the Osiris -Rex spatial probe took 120 grams of rebel – a layer of dust and gravel – from that asteroid, which was at that time at a distance of 300 million kilometers from Earth.
Three years later, in 2023, the probe released its precious load in a well-sealed capsule, a maneuver that allows the researchers to study the harvested matter without risking an atmospheric contamination.
Bill Nelson, NASA administrator then said, with joy, that a rapid first analysis confirmed the presence of some “Water and carbon crystals, two of the elements at the origin of life.”
“Incompatible with terrestrial biology”
However, asteroid Bennu contains much more compounds than those who can be found on Earth.
The diversity of organic matter identified in the samples taken “It is incompatible with terrestrial biology“According to a first study published in Nature Astronomy magazine and conducted by an astrobiologist from NASA, Daniel Glavin, and his astrochemist colleague, Jason Daworkin.
Bennu contains amino acids, including fourteen of the twenty, which are useful for the proteins present in the forms of life on Earth, as well as the five bases that make up DNA and RNA that animate all living beings.
The extraterrestrial contribution to the appearance of life on Earth, a hypothesis that seems to be supported by the recent analysis
The discovery seems to support the hypothesis of an extraterrestrial contribution to the appearance of life on Earth. However, this does not exclude the possibility that life has its origin in the primitive oceans or even in the atmosphere of our planet.
The analysis also revealed the presence of very rare or even non -existent amino acids on “Blue Planet” and several thousand forms of nitrogen compounds.
Bennu’s “father”
How these compounds were created aroused curiosities. Not the question of their origin, which means the search “to the parent ” To Bennu, according to the second study, published in the magazine Nature.
Asteroid Benu, a real pile of rubble, would have formed less than 65 million years ago from a much more massive heavenly body, whose origin dates from the first centuries of the solar system, 4, ago, 5 billion years.
“We know from now that the gross ingredients of life are combined in interesting and complex ways inside Bennu’s parent”said Tim McCoy, the curator of the mineral collections of the National Museum of Natural History of the United States and at the same time the main author of the study, quoted by the institution for which he works.
The research, attended by numerous international laboratories, announces the discovery of mineral salts – inorganic compounds, and they are essential for life – which have never been observed so far in extraterrestrial samples.
The study explains their presence by evaporating the water pockets contained in Bennu’s asteroid.
“Organic and inorganic compounds that have undergone reactions”
It is a crucial point of view, also underlined by Professor Yasuhito Sekine, from the University of Tokyo, in an article accompanying the study published in Nature magazine.
Asteroid water “They would have had organic and inorganic compounds that suffered reactions to form biological molecules”indispensable for the appearance of life.
And these reactions “It could have been induced by evaporation of interstitial water”said Professor Sekine.
Have resulted “Sames” similar to salt crusts found in the dry lakes on Earth. Bennu samples contain, for example, six minerals found in the Searles dry lake in California.
The poor, medium in which life could evolve
The discovery was possible “By analyzing the samples directly collected from asteroid, then carefully preserved”said Professor Sekine.
The samples were kept in a nitrogen atmosphere, excluding any harmful humidity for volatile compounds.
Discovery is all the more important as the “Sames are averages in which life could evolve or could persist in the solar system”the authors of the study notes.
As in the case of poor, whose presence was detected on Enceladus, a month of Saturn, or on the Pitic Pitic Planet, in the asteroid belt between the planets Mars and Jupiter.
These are favorite targets for future spatial exploration missions, according to the study authors, cited in a press release.
“The huge progress in understanding and evolution asteroids Like Bennu and how they were able to help Earth become habitable, ” said Sara Russell, a planetary science teacher at the Natural History Museum in London.
