Episode description

About four and a half years ago, a spacecraft called OSIRIS-REx touched down on the surface of an asteroid called Bennu. 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 Bennu is like and where it might have come from. Two scientific papers published this week give some of the results of those experiments. Researchers found minerals that could have arisen from the drying of an icy brine, and a soup of organic molecules, including ammonia and 14 of the 20 amino acids necessary for life on Earth.

Dr. Danny Glavin and Dr. Dante Lauretta join Flora Lichtman to talk about the samples, what their analysis is revealing, and what those findings could mean for the hunt for life elsewhere in the solar system.

Transcripts for each segment will be available after the show airs on sciencefriday.com.

Subscribe to this podcast. Plus, to stay updated on all things science, sign up for Science Friday's newsletters.