ORIGINS
REWRITTEN
September 2023. A pristine sample from 4.5 billion years ago reaches Earth. 2026 brings groundbreaking new insights: amino acids like glycine were born in icy, radioactive environments. Life's ingredients came not from warm waters, but from the cold of space.
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
260G
Sample collected from surface
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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