ORIGINS
REWRITTEN
A 4.5-billion-year-old sample reveals life's ingredients were born in the cold of space, not warm waters.
Explore DataBENNU COORDINATES
24.00° N, 281.37° E
DISTANCE FROM EARTH
~60-230 Million km
4.5B
Years old – Origin of Bennu's parent body
101955
Asteroid catalog number
500m
Bennu diameter – 5 football fields
121.6g
Sample mass returned to Earth
All the Ingredients for RNA
Bennu samples contain amino acids, nucleobases, and sugars—the exact building blocks needed for RNA and DNA. This discovery strengthens the hypothesis that life's chemical ingredients may have arrived on Earth from space.
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