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In a landmark discovery, NASA scientists have found sugars essential for life, a mysterious “gum-like” substance, and stardust in samples from asteroid Bennu, providing new clues about the origins of life in our solar system. The findings, published in Nature Geosciences and Nature Astronomy, are based on pristine material brought to Earth by NASA’s OSIRIS-REx mission in 2023.​

Sugars Crucial for Life

For the first time in an extraterrestrial sample, scientists detected ribose, which is a five-carbon sugar vital for RNA, and glucose, the six-carbon sugar that powers cells on Earth. While these sugars are not evidence of life itself, their presence, along with previously found amino acids, nucleobases, and carboxylic acids, shows that the building blocks of biology were widespread in the early solar system.​

“These sugars complete the inventory of ingredients crucial to life,” said Yoshihiro Furukawa of Tohoku University, who led the sugar analysis. “All five nucleobases used to construct both DNA and RNA, along with phosphates, have already been found in the Bennu samples. The discovery of ribose means that all of the components to form RNA are present in Bennu.”​

Mysterious ‘Gum’ from Space

A second team, co-led by Zack Gainsforth of the University of California, discovered a polymer-like “gum” in the Bennu samples, a substance never before seen in space rocks. The material, rich in nitrogen and oxygen, forms tangled molecular chains and appears to have formed very early in the asteroid’s history. Scientists believe it could be an early chemical precursor that helped set the stage for life on Earth.​

Stardust and Presolar Grains

The third major finding is an unexpectedly high abundance of stardust and presolar silicate grains in Bennu. These fragments, which survived alteration by fluids in the parent asteroid, offer insights into the origin of the solar system and the diversity of materials accreted during its formation.​

Implications for the Origins of Life

The discoveries suggest that the basic chemical ingredients needed for life were common throughout the early solar system. If materials like these were widespread, places such as Mars or Jupiter’s icy moon Europa may also have been seeded with the same raw ingredients.​

“Because the OSIRIS-REx spacecraft scooped and sealed the Bennu samples directly in space, the grains never touched Earth’s environment. Scientists say that allowed them to study pristine extraterrestrial chemistry, something not possible with meteorites that crash to Earth and quickly become contaminated,” said Danny Glavin, an astrobiologist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center.