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A14 SCIENCE / TECHNOLOGY
Tuesday 4 February 2025
Are we all aliens? NASA’s returned asteroid samples hold the

ingredients of life from a watery world

By MARCIA DUNN Combining the ingredients
AP Aerospace Writer of life with an environment
CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. of sodium-rich salt water,
(AP) — Asteroid samples or brines, “that’s really the
fetched by NASA hold not pathway to life,” said Mc-
only the pristine building Coy, the National Museum
blocks for life but also the of Natural History’s curator
salty remains of an ancient of meteorites. “These pro-
water world, scientists re- cesses probably occurred
ported Wednesday. much earlier and were
The findings provide the much more widespread
strongest evidence yet that than we had thought be-
asteroids may have plant- fore.”
ed the seeds of life on Earth NASA’s Daniel Glavin said
and that these ingredients one of the biggest surpris-
were mingling with water es was the relatively high
almost right from the start. abundance of nitrogen, in-
“That’s the kind of environ- cluding ammonia. While all
ment that could have been of the organic molecules
essential to the steps that found in the Bennu samples
lead from elements to life,” have been identified be-
said the Smithsonian Institu- fore in meteorites, Glavin
tion’s Tim McCoy, one of said the ones from Bennu
the lead study authors. are valid “real extrater-
NASA’s Osiris-Rex space- restrial organic material
craft returned 122 grams (4 formed in space and not
ounces) of dust and peb- This image provided by NASA shows a top-down view of the OSIRIS-REx Touch-and-Go-Sample- a result of contamination
bles from the near-Earth Acquisition-Mechanism (TAGSAM) head with the lid removed, revealing the remainder of the from Earth.”
asteroid Bennu, delivering asteroid sample inside. Bennu a rubble pile just
the sample canister to the Associated Press one-third of a mile (one-half
Utah desert in 2023 before tem’s formation 4.5 billion the form of ammonia and “This discovery was only of a kilometer) across was
swooping off after another years ago were doled out even parts of the genetic possible by analyzing sam- originally part of a much
space rock. It remains the to the two separate re- code. ples that were collected larger asteroid that got
biggest cosmic haul from search teams whose stud- Some if not all of the deli- directly from the asteroid clobbered by other space
beyond the moon. The two ies appeared in the jour- cate salts found at Bennu then carefully preserved rocks. The latest results sug-

previous asteroid sample nals Nature and Nature similar to what’s in the dry back on Earth,” the Insti- gest this parent body had
missions, by Japan, yielded Astronomy. But it was more lakebeds of California’s tute of Science Tokyo’s Ya- an extensive underground
considerably less material. than enough to tease out Mojave Desert and Africa’s suhito Sekine, who was not network of lakes or even
Small amounts of Bennu’s the sodium-rich minerals Sahara would be stripped involved in the studies, said oceans, and that the water
precious black grains left- and confirm the presence away if present in falling in an accompanying edito- evaporated away, leaving
overs from the solar sys- of amino acids, nitrogen in meteorites. rial. behind the salty clues.q

Newly spotted asteroid has a tiny chance of hitting Earth in 2032

By MARCIA DUNN CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. asteroid has a tiny chance the sun becomes better The asteroid will gradually
AP Aerospace Writer (AP) — A newly discovered of smacking Earth in 2032, understood, Chodas and fade from view over the
space agency officials said others said there’s a good next few months, according
Wednesday. chance the risk to Earth to NASA and the European
Scientists put the odds of a could drop to zero. Space Agency.q
strike at slightly more than
1%.
“We are not worried at all,
because of this 99 percent
chance it will miss,” said
Paul Chodas, director of
NASA’s Center for Near
Earth Object Studies. “But it
deserves attention.”
First spotted last month by a
telescope in Chile, the near-
Earth asteroid designated
2024 YR4 is estimated to be
130 to 330 feet (40 to 100
meters) across.
Scientists are keeping close
watch on the space rock, This May 18, 1969 photo provided by NASA shows Earth from
which is currently heading 36,000 nautical miles away as photographed from the Apollo 10
away from Earth. As the spacecraft during its trans-lunar journey toward the moon.
asteroid’s path around Associated Press