NASA scientists have discovered organic content in the samples recovered from the asteroid Bennu, which points back to the start of our solar system.
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00:00NASA scientists studying the asteroid sample retrieved from space are announcing some early
00:06findings.
00:07The OSIRIS-REx project brought the sample from the asteroid Bennu to Earth in 2023.
00:13Dr. Scott Stanford is a NASA research scientist and a member of this team.
00:19What have you all discovered about the contents of the asteroid sample and what known elements
00:23have been identified?
00:26Well, the papers that we released yesterday talk about two things.
00:31One is some of the minerals we found in the samples that tell us something about the nature
00:35of water and the action of water on the parent body.
00:39And then also, we had a paper on the organics that we found in the sample.
00:44In terms of the elements found, the atomic elements where, you know, the asteroid's made
00:48of the same elements the Earth is made of, but what's different is the nature of the
00:52minerals and the molecules, how those atoms are arranged.
00:56And there's a lot of buzz about this.
00:58Dr. Stanford, how are these materials clues to the quote-unquote building blocks of life?
01:04Well, the organics are obviously one of the reasons we went.
01:10They're fascinating because presumably objects like this asteroid provided some of the material
01:15from which the Earth was made.
01:17And so organics in them tell us something about the kinds of compounds that would have
01:21been present on the early Earth.
01:22And in some cases, the molecules we're seeing in the samples are the kinds of molecules
01:27that are used in modern life now.
01:28And so they may have played a role in getting life started on the early Earth.
01:33So that's, and so we want, you know, this is one of the advantages of these samples
01:36is they date back to the very beginning of the solar system and they tell us what some
01:40of the very first stuff that would have ended up on the Earth looked like.
01:43Yeah, this asteroid is four and a half billion years old.
01:47So tell us a little bit more about the secrets that we could learn about our solar system
01:51from it.
01:52Yeah, well, being old is important because you can't tell much about the early Earth
01:58by looking at things that are on the Earth now because the Earth is constantly changing.
02:01We have volcanoes and weather and everything else.
02:03And so there are no rocks on the Earth that are as old as the Earth.
02:07But rocks from asteroid Bennu date back to the very beginning of the solar system.
02:13And then they haven't really been changed that much since the very earliest days.
02:17And so they tell us what the starting material is like, not what things are like after they've
02:23evolved on a planet for four and a half billion years.
02:27So what are some of the next steps?
02:28What further experiments are planned with the asteroid sample?
02:32Well, I can tell you some of those.
02:34I mean, we'll definitely be looking at more in more detail at the organics and at the
02:38minerals.
02:39But one of the advantages of sample return missions like OSIRIS-REx is much of the sample
02:44isn't studied immediately.
02:46It's archived in a curatorial facility in Houston, and then it's available for scientists
02:51to study into the future.
02:53And so there may be people who aren't even born yet who will ultimately discover things
02:57from these samples.
02:59So I can't actually tell you everything that's in the future for this because some of it
03:03will happen after I'm gone.
03:06Pretty interesting stuff.
03:07That is very interesting.
03:09Dr. Scott Sanford with NASA, thanks so much for joining us.
03:13You're welcome.
03:14I'm glad to make it.
03:15Absolutely.
03:16Well, we're glad to talk to you.