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Ancient human artefacts found near caves in Arabian desert
Ancient human artefacts found near caves in Arabian desert
What Is a Bomb Cyclone? Why This Winter Storm Doesn’t Qualify
A rapidly intensifying low-pressure system off the coast is keeping the worst of the snow away from Boston, New York City and Washington, D.C.
Why quantum mechanics says the past isn’t real
Why quantum mechanics says the past isn’t real
Waxing Gibbous Moon
Waxing Gibbous Moon
The waxing gibbous moon rises above Earth’s blue atmosphere in this photograph taken from the International Space Station on Oct. 3, 2025, as it orbited 263 miles above a cloudy Atlantic Ocean off the coast of Quebec, Canada.
In our entire solar system, the only object that shines with its own light is the Sun. That light always beams onto Earth and the Moon from the direction of the Sun, illuminating half of our planet in its orbit and reflecting off the surface of the Moon to create moonlight. Sometimes the entire face of the Moon glows brightly. Other times we see only a thin crescent of light. Sometimes the Moon seems to disappear. These shifts are called Moon phases. The waxing gibbous phase comes just before the full moon.
Image credit: NASA
Waxing Gibbous Moon
The waxing gibbous moon rises above Earth’s blue atmosphere in this photograph taken from the International Space Station on Oct. 3, 2025, as it orbited 263 miles above a cloudy Atlantic Ocean off the coast of Quebec, Canada.
In our entire solar system, the only object that shines with its own light is the Sun. That light always beams onto Earth and the Moon from the direction of the Sun, illuminating half of our planet in its orbit and reflecting off the surface of the Moon to create moonlight. Sometimes the entire face of the Moon glows brightly. Other times we see only a thin crescent of light. Sometimes the Moon seems to disappear. These shifts are called Moon phases. The waxing gibbous phase comes just before the full moon.
Image credit: NASA
The Knotty Problem of Matter Asymmetry Might Be Solved By Extending Physics
Why is the Universe filled with matter? Why isn't it an equal amount of matter and antimatter? We still don't know the answer, but a new approach looks at the symmetries of extended models of particle physics and finds a possible path forward. It's a knotty problem that may just have a knotty solution.
NASA Tests Drones in Death Valley, Preps for Martian Sands and Skies
Next-generation drone flight software is just one of 25 technologies for the Red Planet that the space agency funded for development this year.
When NASA engineers want to test a concept for exploring the Red Planet, they have to find ways to create Mars-like conditions here on Earth. Then they test, tinker, and repeat.
That’s why a team from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California took three research drones to California’s Death Valley National Park and the Mojave Desert earlier this year. They needed barren, featureless desert dunes to hone navigation software. Called Extended Robust Aerial Autonomy, the work is just one of 25 projects funded by the agency’s Mars Exploration Program this past year to push the limits of future technologies. Similar dunes on Mars confused the navigation algorithm of NASA’s Ingenuity Mars Helicopter during several of its last flights, including its 72nd and final flight on the Red Planet.
“Ingenuity was designed to fly over well-textured terrain, estimating its motion by looking at visual features on the ground. But eventually it had to cross over blander areas where this became hard,” said Roland Brockers, a JPL researcher and drone pilot. “We want future vehicles to be more versatile and not have to worry about flying over challenging areas like these sand dunes.”
Whether it’s new navigation software, slope-scaling robotic scouts, or long-distance gliders, the technology being developed by the Mars Exploration Program envisions a future where robots can explore all on their own — or even help astronauts do their work.
Desert dronesNASA scientists and engineers have been going to Death Valley National Park since the 1970s, when the agency was preparing for the first Mars landings with the twin Viking spacecraft. Rubbly volcanic boulders on barren slopes earned one area the name Mars Hill, where much of this research has taken place. Almost half a century later, JPL engineers tested the Perseverance rover’s precision landing system by flying a component of it in a piloted helicopter over the park.
For the drone testing, engineers traveled to the park’s Mars Hill and Mesquite Flats Sand Dunes in late April and early September. The JPL team received only the third-ever license to fly research drones in Death Valley. Temperatures reached as high as 113 degrees Fahrenheit (45 degrees Celsius); gathered beneath a pop-up canopy, team members tracked the progress of their drones on a laptop.
JPL researchers gather under a pop-up tent in Death Valley National Park while monitoring the performance of a research drone equipped with navigation software for Mars.NASA/JPL-Caltech
The test campaign has already resulted in useful findings, including how different camera filters help the drones track the ground and how new algorithms can guide them to safely land in cluttered terrain like Mars Hill’s.
“It’s incredibly exciting to see scientists using Death Valley as a proving ground for space exploration,” said Death Valley National Park Superintendent Mike Reynolds. “It’s a powerful reminder that the park is protected not just for its scenic beauty or recreational opportunities, but as a living laboratory that actively helps us understand desert environments and worlds beyond our own.”
For additional testing during the three-day excursion, the team ventured to the Mojave Desert’s Dumont Dunes. The site of mobility system tests for NASA’s Curiosity rover in 2012, the rippled dunes there offered a variation of the featureless terrain used to test the flight software in Death Valley.
“Field tests give you a much more comprehensive perspective than solely looking at computer models and limited satellite images,” said JPL’s Nathan Williams, a geologist on the team who previously helped operate Ingenuity. “Scientifically interesting features aren’t always located in the most benign places, so we want to be prepared to explore even more challenging terrains than Ingenuity did.”
One of three JPL drones used in recent tests flies over Mars Hill, a region of Death Valley National Park that has been visited by NASA Mars researchers since the 1970s, when the agency was preparing to land the twin Viking spacecraft on the Red Planet.NASA/JPL-Caltech Robot dogs
The California desert isn’t the only field site where Mars technology has been tested this year. In August, researchers from NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston ventured to New Mexico’s White Sands National Park, another desert location that has hosted NASA testing for decades.
They were there with a doglike robot called LASSIE-M (Legged Autonomous Surface Science In Analogue Environments for Mars). Motors in the robot’s legs measure physical properties of the surface that, when combined with other data, lets LASSIE-M shift gait as it encounters terrain that is softer, looser, or crustier — variations often indicative of scientifically interesting changes.
The team’s goal is to develop a robot that can scale rocky or sandy terrain — both of which can be hazardous to a rover — as it scouts ahead of humans and robots alike, using instruments to seek out new science.
Wings for MarsAnother Mars Exploration Program concept funded this past year is an autonomous robot that trades the compactness of the Ingenuity helicopter for the range that comes with wings. NASA’s Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia, has been developing the Mars Electric Reusable Flyer (MERF), which looks like a single wing with twin propellers that allow it to lift off vertically and hover in the air. (A fuselage and tail would be too heavy for this design.) While the flyer skims the sky at high speeds, instruments on its belly can map the surface.
At its full size, the MERF unfolds to be about as long as a small school bus. Langley engineers have been testing a half-scale prototype, sending it soaring across a field on the Virgina campus to study the design’s aerodynamics and the robot’s lightweight materials, which are critical to flying in Mars’ thin atmosphere.
With other projects focused on new forms of power generation, drills and sampling equipment, and cutting-edge autonomous software, there are many new ways for NASA to explore Mars in the future.
News Media Contacts
Andrew Good
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.
818-393-2433
andrew.c.good@jpl.nasa.gov
Alise Fisher / Alana Johnson
NASA Headquarters, Washington
202-617-4977 / 202-672-4780
alise.m.fisher@nasa.gov / alana.r.johnson@nasa.gov
2025-131
Share Details Last Updated Dec 02, 2025 Related Terms Explore More 6 min read NASA Rover Detects Electric Sparks in Mars Dust Devils, Storms Article 15 hours ago 5 min read NASA Orbiter Shines New Light on Long-Running Martian Mystery Article 1 week ago 6 min read NASA’s Mars Spacecraft Capture Images of Comet 3I/ATLAS Article 2 weeks ago Keep Exploring Discover Related Topics Mars ExplorationMars is the only planet we know of inhabited entirely by robots. Learn more about the Mars Missions.
Mars Reconnaissance OrbiterNASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) is the second longest-lived spacecraft to orbit Mars, after 2001 Mars Odyssey.
MRO ScienceOverview Among other ongoing achievements, data collected by Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter continues to help Mars scientists and engineers characterize potential…
Mars ExpressNASA Participation In partnership with their European colleagues, U.S. scientists are participating in the scientific instrument teams of the Mars…
NASA Tests Drones in Death Valley, Preps for Martian Sands and Skies
Next-generation drone flight software is just one of 25 technologies for the Red Planet that the space agency funded for development this year.
When NASA engineers want to test a concept for exploring the Red Planet, they have to find ways to create Mars-like conditions here on Earth. Then they test, tinker, and repeat.
That’s why a team from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California took three research drones to California’s Death Valley National Park and the Mojave Desert earlier this year. They needed barren, featureless desert dunes to hone navigation software. Called Extended Robust Aerial Autonomy, the work is just one of 25 projects funded by the agency’s Mars Exploration Program this past year to push the limits of future technologies. Similar dunes on Mars confused the navigation algorithm of NASA’s Ingenuity Mars Helicopter during several of its last flights, including its 72nd and final flight on the Red Planet.
“Ingenuity was designed to fly over well-textured terrain, estimating its motion by looking at visual features on the ground. But eventually it had to cross over blander areas where this became hard,” said Roland Brockers, a JPL researcher and drone pilot. “We want future vehicles to be more versatile and not have to worry about flying over challenging areas like these sand dunes.”
Whether it’s new navigation software, slope-scaling robotic scouts, or long-distance gliders, the technology being developed by the Mars Exploration Program envisions a future where robots can explore all on their own — or even help astronauts do their work.
Desert dronesNASA scientists and engineers have been going to Death Valley National Park since the 1970s, when the agency was preparing for the first Mars landings with the twin Viking spacecraft. Rubbly volcanic boulders on barren slopes earned one area the name Mars Hill, where much of this research has taken place. Almost half a century later, JPL engineers tested the Perseverance rover’s precision landing system by flying a component of it in a piloted helicopter over the park.
For the drone testing, engineers traveled to the park’s Mars Hill and Mesquite Flats Sand Dunes in late April and early September. The JPL team received only the third-ever license to fly research drones in Death Valley. Temperatures reached as high as 113 degrees Fahrenheit (45 degrees Celsius); gathered beneath a pop-up canopy, team members tracked the progress of their drones on a laptop.
JPL researchers gather under a pop-up tent in Death Valley National Park while monitoring the performance of a research drone equipped with navigation software for Mars.NASA/JPL-CaltechThe test campaign has already resulted in useful findings, including how different camera filters help the drones track the ground and how new algorithms can guide them to safely land in cluttered terrain like Mars Hill’s.
“It’s incredibly exciting to see scientists using Death Valley as a proving ground for space exploration,” said Death Valley National Park Superintendent Mike Reynolds. “It’s a powerful reminder that the park is protected not just for its scenic beauty or recreational opportunities, but as a living laboratory that actively helps us understand desert environments and worlds beyond our own.”
For additional testing during the three-day excursion, the team ventured to the Mojave Desert’s Dumont Dunes. The site of mobility system tests for NASA’s Curiosity rover in 2012, the rippled dunes there offered a variation of the featureless terrain used to test the flight software in Death Valley.
“Field tests give you a much more comprehensive perspective than solely looking at computer models and limited satellite images,” said JPL’s Nathan Williams, a geologist on the team who previously helped operate Ingenuity. “Scientifically interesting features aren’t always located in the most benign places, so we want to be prepared to explore even more challenging terrains than Ingenuity did.”
One of three JPL drones used in recent tests flies over Mars Hill, a region of Death Valley National Park that has been visited by NASA Mars researchers since the 1970s, when the agency was preparing to land the twin Viking spacecraft on the Red Planet.NASA/JPL-Caltech Robot dogsThe California desert isn’t the only field site where Mars technology has been tested this year. In August, researchers from NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston ventured to New Mexico’s White Sands National Park, another desert location that has hosted NASA testing for decades.
They were there with a doglike robot called LASSIE-M (Legged Autonomous Surface Science In Analogue Environments for Mars). Motors in the robot’s legs measure physical properties of the surface that, when combined with other data, lets LASSIE-M shift gait as it encounters terrain that is softer, looser, or crustier — variations often indicative of scientifically interesting changes.
The team’s goal is to develop a robot that can scale rocky or sandy terrain — both of which can be hazardous to a rover — as it scouts ahead of humans and robots alike, using instruments to seek out new science.
Wings for MarsAnother Mars Exploration Program concept funded this past year is an autonomous robot that trades the compactness of the Ingenuity helicopter for the range that comes with wings. NASA’s Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia, has been developing the Mars Electric Reusable Flyer (MERF), which looks like a single wing with twin propellers that allow it to lift off vertically and hover in the air. (A fuselage and tail would be too heavy for this design.) While the flyer skims the sky at high speeds, instruments on its belly can map the surface.
At its full size, the MERF unfolds to be about as long as a small school bus. Langley engineers have been testing a half-scale prototype, sending it soaring across a field on the Virgina campus to study the design’s aerodynamics and the robot’s lightweight materials, which are critical to flying in Mars’ thin atmosphere.
With other projects focused on new forms of power generation, drills and sampling equipment, and cutting-edge autonomous software, there are many new ways for NASA to explore Mars in the future.
News Media Contacts
Andrew Good
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.
818-393-2433
andrew.c.good@jpl.nasa.gov
Alise Fisher / Alana Johnson
NASA Headquarters, Washington
202-617-4977 / 202-672-4780
alise.m.fisher@nasa.gov / alana.r.johnson@nasa.gov
2025-131
Share Details Last Updated Dec 02, 2025 Related Terms Explore More 6 min read NASA Rover Detects Electric Sparks in Mars Dust Devils, Storms Article 11 hours ago 5 min read NASA Orbiter Shines New Light on Long-Running Martian Mystery Article 1 week ago 6 min read NASA’s Mars Spacecraft Capture Images of Comet 3I/ATLAS Article 2 weeks ago Keep Exploring Discover Related Topics Mars ExplorationMars is the only planet we know of inhabited entirely by robots. Learn more about the Mars Missions.
Mars Reconnaissance OrbiterNASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) is the second longest-lived spacecraft to orbit Mars, after 2001 Mars Odyssey.
MRO ScienceOverview Among other ongoing achievements, data collected by Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter continues to help Mars scientists and engineers characterize potential…
Mars ExpressNASA Participation In partnership with their European colleagues, U.S. scientists are participating in the scientific instrument teams of the Mars…
Video: Highlights from a Sickle Cell Disease Event
Scientific American hosted an event at Morehouse School of Medicine to highlight medical advances in treating sickle cell disease and how far we still have to go
Black hole entropy hints at a surprising truth about our universe
Black hole entropy hints at a surprising truth about our universe
Tiny Sparks of Lightning Detected on Mars for the First Time
The microphone on NASA's Perseverance rover unexpectedly heard tiny claps of thunder from sparks caused by colliding dust grains.
The post Tiny Sparks of Lightning Detected on Mars for the First Time appeared first on Sky & Telescope.
Scientists Release Data Backing Hepatitis B Vaccines for Newborns Ahead of Crucial Vaccine Panel Vote
The review was carried out and released by the Vaccine Integrity Project, which is dedicated to bolstering vaccines in the U.S.
NASA’s Moon Rocket Celebrates 250 Years of American Innovation
NASA is marking America’s 250th year with a bold new symbol of the nation’s relentless drive to explore.
The America 250 emblem is now on the twin solid rocket boosters of the SLS (Space Launch System) rocket for Artemis II — the powerhouse that will launch a crew of four around the Moon next year. Unveiled Tuesday, the design echoes the America 250 Commission’s Spirit of Innovation theme, honoring a country that has never stopped pushing the horizon forward.
At NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida, technicians spent recent weeks carefully applying the emblem on the rocket inside the Vehicle Assembly Building — the same place where rockets for Apollo once stood. Engineers are running final tests on SLS and the Orion spacecraft as preparations intensify for Artemis II.
The roughly 10-day Artemis II journey around the Moon will mark a defining moment in this new era of American exploration — paving the way for U.S. crews to land on the lunar surface and ultimately push onward to Mars.
America’s spirit of discovery is alive, and Artemis is carrying it to the Moon and beyond.
Image credit: NASA/Ben Smegelsky
NASA’s Moon Rocket Celebrates 250 Years of American Innovation
NASA is marking America’s 250th year with a bold new symbol of the nation’s relentless drive to explore.
The America 250 emblem is now on the twin solid rocket boosters of the SLS (Space Launch System) rocket for Artemis II — the powerhouse that will launch a crew of four around the Moon next year. Unveiled Tuesday, the design echoes the America 250 Commission’s Spirit of Innovation theme, honoring a country that has never stopped pushing the horizon forward.
At NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida, technicians spent recent weeks carefully applying the emblem on the rocket inside the Vehicle Assembly Building — the same place where rockets for Apollo once stood. Engineers are running final tests on SLS and the Orion spacecraft as preparations intensify for Artemis II.
The roughly 10-day Artemis II journey around the Moon will mark a defining moment in this new era of American exploration — paving the way for U.S. crews to land on the lunar surface and ultimately push onward to Mars.
America’s spirit of discovery is alive, and Artemis is carrying it to the Moon and beyond.
Image credit: NASA/Ben Smegelsky
Sugars, ‘Gum,’ Stardust Found in NASA’s Asteroid Bennu Samples
The asteroid Bennu continues to provide new clues to scientists’ biggest questions about the formation of the early solar system and the origins of life. As part of the ongoing study of pristine samples delivered to Earth by NASA’s OSIRIS-REx (Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification, and Security-Regolith Explorer) spacecraft, three new papers published Tuesday by the journals Nature Geosciences and Nature Astronomy present remarkable discoveries: sugars essential for biology, a gum-like substance not seen before in astromaterials, and an unexpectedly high abundance of dust produced by supernova explosions.
Sugars essential to life
Scientists led by Yoshihiro Furukawa of Tohoku University in Japan found sugars essential for biology on Earth in the Bennu samples, detailing their findings in the journal Nature Geoscience. The five-carbon sugar ribose and, for the first time in an extraterrestrial sample, six-carbon glucose were found. Although these sugars are not evidence of life, their detection, along with previous detections of amino acids, nucleobases, and carboxylic acids in Bennu samples, show building blocks of biological molecules were widespread throughout the solar system.
For life on Earth, the sugars deoxyribose and ribose are key building blocks of DNA and RNA, respectively. DNA is the primary carrier of genetic information in cells. RNA performs numerous functions, and life as we know it could not exist without it. Ribose in RNA is used in the molecule’s sugar-phosphate “backbone” that connects a string of information-carrying nucleobases.
“All five nucleobases used to construct both DNA and RNA, along with phosphates, have already been found in the Bennu samples brought to Earth by OSIRIS-REx,” said Furukawa. “The new discovery of ribose means that all of the components to form the molecule RNA are present in Bennu.”
The discovery of ribose in asteroid samples is not a complete surprise. Ribose has previously been found in two meteorites recovered on Earth. What is important about the Bennu samples is that researchers did not find deoxyribose. If Bennu is any indication, this means ribose may have been more common than deoxyribose in environments of the early solar system.
Researchers think the presence of ribose and lack of deoxyribose supports the “RNA world” hypothesis, where the first forms of life relied on RNA as the primary molecule to store information and to drive chemical reactions necessary for survival.
A team of Japanese and US scientists have discovered the bio-essential sugars ribose and glucose in samples of asteroid Bennu that were collected by NASA’s OSIRIS-REx mission. This finding builds on the earlier discovery of nucleobases (the genetic components of DNA and RNA), phosphate, and amino acids (the building blocks of proteins) in the Bennu samples, showing that the molecular ingredients of life could have been delivered to early Earth by meteorites. Download this graphic from NASA’s Scientific Visualization Studio website: https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/14932NASA/Goddard/University of Arizona/Dan Gallagher
“Present day life is based on a complex system organized primarily by three types of functional biopolymers: DNA, RNA, and proteins,” explains Furukawa. “However, early life may have been simpler. RNA is the leading candidate for the first functional biopolymer because it can store genetic information and catalyze many biological reactions.”
The Bennu samples also contained one of the most common forms of “food” (or energy) used by life on Earth, the sugar glucose, which is the first evidence that an important energy source for life as we know it was also present in the early solar system.
Mysterious, ancient ‘gum’
A second paper, in the journal Nature Astronomy led by Scott Sandford at NASA’s Ames Research Center in California’s Silicon Valley and Zack Gainsforth of the University of California, Berkeley, reveals a gum-like material in the Bennu samples never seen before in space rocks – something that could have helped set the stage on Earth for the ingredients of life to emerge. The surprising substance was likely formed in the early days of the solar system, as Bennu’s young parent asteroid warmed.
Once soft and flexible, but since hardened, this ancient “space gum” consists of polymer-like materials extremely rich in nitrogen and oxygen. Such complex molecules could have provided some of the chemical precursors that helped trigger life on Earth, and finding them in the pristine samples from Bennu is important for scientists studying how life began and whether it exists beyond our planet.
On this primitive asteroid that formed in the early days of the solar system, we’re looking at events near the beginning of the beginning.Scott SandFord
Astrophysicist, NASA's Ames Research Center
Bennu’s ancestral asteroid formed from materials in the solar nebula – the rotating cloud of gas and dust that gave rise to the solar system – and contained a variety of minerals and ices. As the asteroid began to warm, due to natural radiation, a compound called carbamate formed through a process involving ammonia and carbon dioxide. Carbamate is water soluble, but it survived long enough to polymerize, reacting with itself and other molecules to form larger and more complex chains impervious to water. This suggests that it formed before the parent body warmed enough to become a watery environment.
“With this strange substance, we’re looking at, quite possibly, one of the earliest alterations of materials that occurred in this rock,” said Sandford. “On this primitive asteroid that formed in the early days of the solar system, we’re looking at events near the beginning of the beginning.”
Using an infrared microscope, Sandford’s team selected unusual, carbon-rich grains containing abundant nitrogen and oxygen. They then began what Sandford calls “blacksmithing at the molecular level,” using the Molecular Foundry at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) in Berkeley, California. Applying ultra-thin layers of platinum, they reinforced a particle, welded on a tungsten needle to lift the tiny grain, and shaved the fragment down using a focused beam of charged particles.
A microscopic particle of asteroid Bennu, brought to Earth by NASA’s OSIRIS-REx mission, is manipulated under a transmission electron microscope. In order to move the fragment for further analysis, researchers first reinforced it with thin strips of platinum (the “L” shape on the particle’s surface) then welded a tungsten microneedle to it. The asteroid fragment measures 30 micrometers (about one-one thousandth of an inch) across.NASA/University of California, Berkeley
When the particle was a thousand times thinner than a human hair, they analyzed its composition via electron microscopy at the Molecular Foundry and X-ray spectroscopy at Berkeley Lab’s Advanced Light Source. The ALS’s high spatial resolution and sensitive X-ray beams enabled unprecedented chemical analysis.
“We knew we had something remarkable the instant the images started to appear on the monitor,” said Gainsforth. “It was like nothing we had ever seen, and for months we were consumed by data and theories as we attempted to understand just what it was and how it could have come into existence.”
The team conducted a slew of experiments to examine the material’s characteristics. As the details emerged, the evidence suggested the strange substance had been deposited in layers on grains of ice and minerals present in the asteroid.
It was also flexible – a pliable material, similar to used gum or even a soft plastic. Indeed, during their work with the samples, researchers noticed the strange material was bendy and dimpled when pressure was applied. The stuff was translucent, and exposure to radiation made it brittle, like a lawn chair left too many seasons in the sun.
“Looking at its chemical makeup, we see the same kinds of chemical groups that occur in polyurethane on Earth,” said Sandford, “making this material from Bennu something akin to a ‘space plastic.’”
The ancient asteroid stuff isn’t simply polyurethane, though, which is an orderly polymer. This one has more “random, hodgepodge connections and a composition of elements that differs from particle to particle,” said Sandford. But the comparison underscores the surprising nature of the organic material discovered in NASA’s asteroid samples, and the research team aims to study more of it.
By pursuing clues about what went on long ago, deep inside an asteroid, scientists can better understand the young solar system – revealing the precursors to and ingredients of life it already contained, and how far those raw materials may have been scattered, thanks to asteroids much like Bennu.
Abundant supernova dust
Another paper in the journal Nature Astronomy, led by Ann Nguyen of NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston, analyzed presolar grains – dust from stars predating our solar system – found in two different rock types in the Bennu samples to learn more about where its parent body formed and how it was altered by geologic processes. It is believed that presolar dust was generally well-mixed as our solar system formed. The samples had six-times the amount of supernova dust than any other studied astromaterial, suggesting the asteroid’s parent body formed in a region of the protoplanetary disk enriched in the dust of dying stars.
The study also reveals that, while Bennu’s parent asteroid experienced extensive alteration by fluids, there are still pockets of less-altered materials within the samples that offer insights into its origin.
An artistic visualization of the OSIRIS-REx spacecraft descending towards asteroid Bennu to collect a sample.NASA/Goddard/University of Arizona
“These fragments retain a higher abundance of organic matter and presolar silicate grains, which are known to be easily destroyed by aqueous alteration in asteroids,” said Nguyen. “Their preservation in the Bennu samples was a surprise and illustrates that some material escaped alteration in the parent body. Our study reveals the diversity of presolar materials that the parent accreted as it was forming.”
NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center provided overall mission management, systems engineering, and the safety and mission assurance for OSIRIS-REx. Dante Lauretta of the University of Arizona, Tucson, is the principal investigator. The university leads the science team and the mission’s science observation planning and data processing. Lockheed Martin Space in Littleton, Colorado, built the spacecraft and provided flight operations. Goddard and KinetX Aerospace were responsible for navigating the OSIRIS-REx spacecraft. Curation for OSIRIS-REx takes place at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston. International partnerships on this mission include the OSIRIS-REx Laser Altimeter instrument from CSA (Canadian Space Agency) and asteroid sample science collaboration with JAXA’s (Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency’s) Hayabusa2 mission. OSIRIS-REx is the third mission in NASA’s New Frontiers Program, managed by NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, for the agency’s Science Mission Directorate in Washington.
For more information on the OSIRIS-REx mission, visit:
https://www.nasa.gov/osiris-rex
Karen Fox / Molly Wasser
Headquarters, Washington
202-285-5155 / 240-419-1732
karen.c.fox@nasa.gov / molly.l.wasser@nasa.gov
Sugars, ‘Gum,’ Stardust Found in NASA’s Asteroid Bennu Samples
The asteroid Bennu continues to provide new clues to scientists’ biggest questions about the formation of the early solar system and the origins of life. As part of the ongoing study of pristine samples delivered to Earth by NASA’s OSIRIS-REx (Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification, and Security-Regolith Explorer) spacecraft, three new papers published Tuesday by the journals Nature Geosciences and Nature Astronomy present remarkable discoveries: sugars essential for biology, a gum-like substance not seen before in astromaterials, and an unexpectedly high abundance of dust produced by supernova explosions.
Sugars essential to life
Scientists led by Yoshihiro Furukawa of Tohoku University in Japan found sugars essential for biology on Earth in the Bennu samples, detailing their findings in the journal Nature Geoscience. The five-carbon sugar ribose and, for the first time in an extraterrestrial sample, six-carbon glucose were found. Although these sugars are not evidence of life, their detection, along with previous detections of amino acids, nucleobases, and carboxylic acids in Bennu samples, show building blocks of biological molecules were widespread throughout the solar system.
For life on Earth, the sugars deoxyribose and ribose are key building blocks of DNA and RNA, respectively. DNA is the primary carrier of genetic information in cells. RNA performs numerous functions, and life as we know it could not exist without it. Ribose in RNA is used in the molecule’s sugar-phosphate “backbone” that connects a string of information-carrying nucleobases.
“All five nucleobases used to construct both DNA and RNA, along with phosphates, have already been found in the Bennu samples brought to Earth by OSIRIS-REx,” said Furukawa. “The new discovery of ribose means that all of the components to form the molecule RNA are present in Bennu.”
The discovery of ribose in asteroid samples is not a complete surprise. Ribose has previously been found in two meteorites recovered on Earth. What is important about the Bennu samples is that researchers did not find deoxyribose. If Bennu is any indication, this means ribose may have been more common than deoxyribose in environments of the early solar system.
Researchers think the presence of ribose and lack of deoxyribose supports the “RNA world” hypothesis, where the first forms of life relied on RNA as the primary molecule to store information and to drive chemical reactions necessary for survival.
A team of Japanese and US scientists have discovered the bio-essential sugars ribose and glucose in samples of asteroid Bennu that were collected by NASA’s OSIRIS-REx mission. This finding builds on the earlier discovery of nucleobases (the genetic components of DNA and RNA), phosphate, and amino acids (the building blocks of proteins) in the Bennu samples, showing that the molecular ingredients of life could have been delivered to early Earth by meteorites. Download this graphic from NASA’s Scientific Visualization Studio website: https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/14932NASA/Goddard/University of Arizona/Dan Gallagher“Present day life is based on a complex system organized primarily by three types of functional biopolymers: DNA, RNA, and proteins,” explains Furukawa. “However, early life may have been simpler. RNA is the leading candidate for the first functional biopolymer because it can store genetic information and catalyze many biological reactions.”
The Bennu samples also contained one of the most common forms of “food” (or energy) used by life on Earth, the sugar glucose, which is the first evidence that an important energy source for life as we know it was also present in the early solar system.
Mysterious, ancient ‘gum’
A second paper, in the journal Nature Astronomy led by Scott Sandford at NASA’s Ames Research Center in California’s Silicon Valley and Zack Gainsforth of the University of California, Berkeley, reveals a gum-like material in the Bennu samples never seen before in space rocks – something that could have helped set the stage on Earth for the ingredients of life to emerge. The surprising substance was likely formed in the early days of the solar system, as Bennu’s young parent asteroid warmed.
Once soft and flexible, but since hardened, this ancient “space gum” consists of polymer-like materials extremely rich in nitrogen and oxygen. Such complex molecules could have provided some of the chemical precursors that helped trigger life on Earth, and finding them in the pristine samples from Bennu is important for scientists studying how life began and whether it exists beyond our planet.
On this primitive asteroid that formed in the early days of the solar system, we’re looking at events near the beginning of the beginning.Scott SandFord
Astrophysicist, NASA's Ames Research Center
Bennu’s ancestral asteroid formed from materials in the solar nebula – the rotating cloud of gas and dust that gave rise to the solar system – and contained a variety of minerals and ices. As the asteroid began to warm, due to natural radiation, a compound called carbamate formed through a process involving ammonia and carbon dioxide. Carbamate is water soluble, but it survived long enough to polymerize, reacting with itself and other molecules to form larger and more complex chains impervious to water. This suggests that it formed before the parent body warmed enough to become a watery environment.
“With this strange substance, we’re looking at, quite possibly, one of the earliest alterations of materials that occurred in this rock,” said Sandford. “On this primitive asteroid that formed in the early days of the solar system, we’re looking at events near the beginning of the beginning.”
Using an infrared microscope, Sandford’s team selected unusual, carbon-rich grains containing abundant nitrogen and oxygen. They then began what Sandford calls “blacksmithing at the molecular level,” using the Molecular Foundry at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) in Berkeley, California. Applying ultra-thin layers of platinum, they reinforced a particle, welded on a tungsten needle to lift the tiny grain, and shaved the fragment down using a focused beam of charged particles.
A microscopic particle of asteroid Bennu, brought to Earth by NASA’s OSIRIS-REx mission, is manipulated under a transmission electron microscope. In order to move the fragment for further analysis, researchers first reinforced it with thin strips of platinum (the “L” shape on the particle’s surface) then welded a tungsten microneedle to it. The asteroid fragment measures 30 micrometers (about one-one thousandth of an inch) across.NASA/University of California, BerkeleyWhen the particle was a thousand times thinner than a human hair, they analyzed its composition via electron microscopy at the Molecular Foundry and X-ray spectroscopy at Berkeley Lab’s Advanced Light Source. The ALS’s high spatial resolution and sensitive X-ray beams enabled unprecedented chemical analysis.
“We knew we had something remarkable the instant the images started to appear on the monitor,” said Gainsforth. “It was like nothing we had ever seen, and for months we were consumed by data and theories as we attempted to understand just what it was and how it could have come into existence.”
The team conducted a slew of experiments to examine the material’s characteristics. As the details emerged, the evidence suggested the strange substance had been deposited in layers on grains of ice and minerals present in the asteroid.
It was also flexible – a pliable material, similar to used gum or even a soft plastic. Indeed, during their work with the samples, researchers noticed the strange material was bendy and dimpled when pressure was applied. The stuff was translucent, and exposure to radiation made it brittle, like a lawn chair left too many seasons in the sun.
“Looking at its chemical makeup, we see the same kinds of chemical groups that occur in polyurethane on Earth,” said Sandford, “making this material from Bennu something akin to a ‘space plastic.’”
The ancient asteroid stuff isn’t simply polyurethane, though, which is an orderly polymer. This one has more “random, hodgepodge connections and a composition of elements that differs from particle to particle,” said Sandford. But the comparison underscores the surprising nature of the organic material discovered in NASA’s asteroid samples, and the research team aims to study more of it.
By pursuing clues about what went on long ago, deep inside an asteroid, scientists can better understand the young solar system – revealing the precursors to and ingredients of life it already contained, and how far those raw materials may have been scattered, thanks to asteroids much like Bennu.
Abundant supernova dust
Another paper in the journal Nature Astronomy, led by Ann Nguyen of NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston, analyzed presolar grains – dust from stars predating our solar system – found in two different rock types in the Bennu samples to learn more about where its parent body formed and how it was altered by geologic processes. It is believed that presolar dust was generally well-mixed as our solar system formed. The samples had six-times the amount of supernova dust than any other studied astromaterial, suggesting the asteroid’s parent body formed in a region of the protoplanetary disk enriched in the dust of dying stars.
The study also reveals that, while Bennu’s parent asteroid experienced extensive alteration by fluids, there are still pockets of less-altered materials within the samples that offer insights into its origin.
An artistic visualization of the OSIRIS-REx spacecraft descending towards asteroid Bennu to collect a sample.NASA/Goddard/University of Arizona“These fragments retain a higher abundance of organic matter and presolar silicate grains, which are known to be easily destroyed by aqueous alteration in asteroids,” said Nguyen. “Their preservation in the Bennu samples was a surprise and illustrates that some material escaped alteration in the parent body. Our study reveals the diversity of presolar materials that the parent accreted as it was forming.”
NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center provided overall mission management, systems engineering, and the safety and mission assurance for OSIRIS-REx. Dante Lauretta of the University of Arizona, Tucson, is the principal investigator. The university leads the science team and the mission’s science observation planning and data processing. Lockheed Martin Space in Littleton, Colorado, built the spacecraft and provided flight operations. Goddard and KinetX Aerospace were responsible for navigating the OSIRIS-REx spacecraft. Curation for OSIRIS-REx takes place at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston. International partnerships on this mission include the OSIRIS-REx Laser Altimeter instrument from CSA (Canadian Space Agency) and asteroid sample science collaboration with JAXA’s (Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency’s) Hayabusa2 mission. OSIRIS-REx is the third mission in NASA’s New Frontiers Program, managed by NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, for the agency’s Science Mission Directorate in Washington.
For more information on the OSIRIS-REx mission, visit:
https://www.nasa.gov/osiris-rex
Karen Fox / Molly Wasser
Headquarters, Washington
202-285-5155 / 240-419-1732
karen.c.fox@nasa.gov / molly.l.wasser@nasa.gov