Listener supported WNYC Studios.

This is Science Friday. I'm Flora Lichten. Today on the podcast, how an asteroid sample is making astrobiology researchers rethink a couple things.

I felt pretty discouraged, actually. I'm like, wow, this is 20 years of my research.

You know, I can just flush down the toilet.

About four and a half years ago, a spacecraft called Osiris Rex landed on the surface of an asteroid

called Benu.

It drilled down and scooped up samples of rock and dust, and after several years of travel, delivered those samples back to Earth.

Since then, researchers around the world have been analyzing tiny bits of that asteroid

dust, trying to tease out as much information as they can about

what Benu is like and where it might have come from. Two scientific papers published this week

give some results of those experiments. Joining me now are Dr. Danny Glovin, senior scientist at

NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center and co-investigator on the Osiris

Rex Asteroid sample return mission. And Dr. Dante Loretta, planetary scientist at the University

of Arizona and leader of the Osiris Rex mission. He's also the author of Asteroid Hunter. Welcome to you both.

Thank you. It's great to be here. Yeah. You two know each other, I gather.

Yeah. Actually, Dante and other, I gather. Yeah.

Actually, Dante and I met 22 years ago where we shared a tent in Antarctica as part of the

Ans met, meteorite hunting expedition, and actually together discovered this rock, a meteorite

from space that had liquid water on it, which was clearly a sign of contamination. So even in the most

pristine environment on Earth, meteorites can still be contaminated. And this is where the idea

for Osiris Rex was born. Yeah, it was a really profound moment. Danny was well known for

studying a famous Martian meteorite that had been found in Antarctica called

...