Our findings are revealed in two new papers published in Nature and Nature Astronomy on Jan. 29. They indicate that water may have once been present on Bennu's parent body, and offer new insights into ...

Scientists have discovered a unique sequence of minerals that formed from evaporated water in samples from Bennu. These minerals date back to the early solar system and include compounds never ...

The Bennu samples contain 14 of the 20 amino acids that are essential for life on Earth to build proteins. Also found were ...

McCoy’s team, including 66 researchers across four continents, found the salt and minerals left behind as water on Bennu, or its larger parent asteroid, evaporated. The minerals include sodium ...

Samples of Bennu were brought back to Earth by NASA’s OSIRIS-REx spacecraft in 2023. Now, a pair of newly published papers ...

But samples taken directly out of an asteroid like Bennu, which has been floating around in the cold vacuum of space for billions of years, preserve a pristine ancient snapshot. Water and a high ...

Near-Earth asteroid Bennu has a slim chance of colliding with Earth in 2182. If it does, the impact could trigger a global ...

Related: This is what’s inside NASA’s previously stuck asteroid sampler] The presence of these compounds therefore implies the presence of liquid water at some point in Bennu’s history—or ...

Bennu might not be the only extraterrestrial ... meaning it’s at the right distance from its central star to sustain water on its surface. While Bennu harbors an intriguing mix of raw ...

Samples of matter returned from the asteroid Bennu support the theory that asteroids could have brought the building blocks of life to Earth, scientists report in a pair of new studies published ...