In 2016, the OSIRIS-REx Mission was launched with the aim of taking a sample from asteroid 101955 Bennu. It was the first attempt to analyze the composition of an asteroid while it was still in space. This asteroid sample returned to Earth safely in 2023. Yoshihiro Furukawa, who led a team of scientists from Tohoku University, announced that they had found a sugar compound that is a component of starting life in the sample that returned to Earth.
The compound ribose is required for the formation of RNA and glucose, which are used by life on Earth. The discovery of these two sugar compounds does not prove the existence of terrestrial creatures other than on Earth, but supports the scientific hypothesis that an asteroid hit Earth billions of years ago and started life on Earth. In space, there are billions of asteroids that have the ingredients for starting organisms, so the probability of life other than on Earth is no longer zero.
The sample from Bennu is the first in history to be taken directly from an asteroid before it reached Earth. So there is no contamination in the sample studied. The Tohoku University team analyzed 600 milligrams of Bennu dust, which was tested with water and acid to extract sugars. Laboratory equipment was then used to detect the presence of ribose, glucose and other sugars.
The same team will now focus on studying samples from the asteroid Ryugu, which was returned to Earth in 2020 by the Hayabusa2 mission. Studying this sample is expected to be more difficult, as only 100 mg of the Ryugu sample was successfully collected.
The study was published in the journal Nature Geoscience.