Smithsonian and NASA scientists set out to collect an asteroid sample that may hold clues to the origins of life in our solar system.

NASA "We're seeing minerals in Bennu samples that we have never seen before in a meteorite or any extraterrestrial sample," said Tim McCoy of the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History ...

A team at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural ... An important reason NASA selected Bennu for the sample return mission is because of its relatively close proximity, making the endeavor ...

NASA’s OSIRIS-REx (Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification, and Security-Regolith Explorer) mission has detected amino acids in the largest asteroid sample ever collected in space, ...

The sample, which the OSIRIS-REx spacecraft collected from the asteroid Bennu and returned to Earth ... curator of meteorites at the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History, said in ...

Scientists from NASA’s OSIRIS-REx asteroid sample return mission recently delivered remarkable findings about asteroid 101955 Bennu after the mission returned its samples to Earth in 2023.

Scanning electron microscope images of trona found in samples of the asteroid Bennu returned by NASA’s OSIRIS-REx mission. Trona is water-bearing sodium carbonate, also known commonly as soda ash.

The chemical building blocks of life have been found in the grainy dust of an asteroid called Bennu, an analysis reveals ... was discovered in the sample too. Some of these compounds have been ...

“That’s the kind of environment that could have been essential to the steps that lead from elements to life,” said the Smithsonian ... asteroid Bennu, delivering the sample canister to ...

“That’s the kind of environment that could have been essential to the steps that lead from elements to life,” said the Smithsonian Institution ... pebbles from the near-Earth asteroid Bennu, ...