NASA Finds Mysterious Space Gum, Sugars & Stardust In Bennu Asteroid Autopsy

Samples retrieved from asteroid Bennu by NASA’s OSIRIS-REx mission in September 2023 have yielded a surprising treasure trove, revealing not just the building blocks of life, but also a mysterious "space gum" and ancient stellar dust.

Researchers have detailed three major findings published in Nature Geosciences and Nature Astronomy. Foremost among them was the detection of ribose, a sugar that serves as the molecular backbone of RNA, and glucose, the primary energy source for nearly all known life (which also marks the first time glucose has been identified in an extraterrestrial sample).

The discovery of ribose, coupled with the prior detection of all five nucleobases and phosphates in the same sample, means Bennu literally carries all the necessary components to form the RNA molecule. Yoshihiro Furukawa of Tohoku University, who led the sugar analysis, noted that the absence of deoxyribose (the sugar in DNA) supports the "RNA world" hypothesis ...