How NASA Found the Ingredients For Life on an Asteroid

NASA's Curious Universe

Katie Konans

Science

4.5 • 1K Ratings

🗓️ 29 January 2025

⏱️ 28 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

How did life begin? It’s one of science’s biggest questions, but it’s impossible to answer on Earth, where ancient clues have been buried by the planet’s shifting surface. Instead, scientists are looking beyond our own planet, to asteroids like Bennu, a distant fragment of a lost world. In 2023, NASA’s OSIRIS-REx spacecraft collected a sample of Bennu’s surface and brought it back to Earth. Ever since, scientists have been hard at work studying the fragments of asteroid Bennu. Now, they’re ready to reveal the results—our best look yet at a time capsule from the early solar system that once fostered the ingredients for life.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hey, space nerds, this is NASA's curious universe.
0:04.0	I'm your host, Patty Boyd, and today, we are diving into some of the biggest unanswered questions
0:10.0	in science.
0:12.0	How did we get here?
0:15.0	How did life start on Earth?
0:26.6	Some of the answers could come from asteroids in our own solar system. So NASA sent a spacecraft called Osiris Rex to sample one, an asteroid called Benu.
0:33.6	In the 16 months since NASA scientists cracked open the sample canister,
0:38.3	they've been carefully studying the rocks within.
0:41.3	And now, finally, they're sharing some exciting results.
0:45.3	In new research, the Osiris Rex team reveals Benu,
0:49.3	carries organic molecules, the building blocks of life.
0:53.3	We're going to talk about all of this with
0:56.0	Jose Aponte. He's an astrochemist who works with the Osiris Rex team. He is one of the few
1:02.5	people who gets to get up close and personal with Benu. Jose, welcome to Curious Universe.
1:11.6	Thank you, buddy.
1:13.6	So how did you first get interested in space and in studying asteroids like Benu?
1:18.6	Well, that's a difficult question to answer.
1:21.6	I'm a chemist by training, so I got my bachelor's in chemistry.
1:26.6	And I didn't know anything about space.
1:28.5	I didn't have actually curiosity about space at all through my undergrad and later graduate
1:33.8	schools studies.
1:35.7	So I'm originally from Peru, and that's where I obtained my bachelor's degree in chemistry,
	...

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