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In January 2025, scientists analyzing samples NASA's OSIRIS-REx mission retrieved from asteroid Bennu in 2023 announced they had found a wide range of amino acids and all of the nucleobases used to build DNA and RNA.
NASA's OSIRIS-REx mission returned samples from asteroid Bennu, and scientists analyzing that material in January 2025 announced they had found a wide range of amino acids along with all of the nucleobases used to build DNA and RNA. This matters because amino acids and nucleobases are essential chemical building blocks used by every living thing on Earth.
Ryugu was sampled by a different mission, Japan's Hayabusa2, and Vesta is a large asteroid that has only been studied remotely, not sampled and returned to Earth, so neither one is connected to this particular Bennu discovery.
Researchers were careful to stress that finding these building blocks is not evidence of actual life on Bennu, but it does support the idea that the raw ingredients for life may have been common throughout the early solar system, possibly even delivered to early Earth by asteroid impacts.
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