Life-Essential Sugars Detected in Asteroid Bennu Samples

On 2^nd December 2025, NASA announced the discovery of several sugars essential for life in samples returned from asteroid Bennu.

• The pristine samples were collected and brought back to Earth in 2023 by NASA’s OSIRIS-REx spacecraft.
• The team also identified glucose, the primary energy source for nearly all life on Earth, marking its first detection in an extraterrestrial sample.
• While not evidence of life itself, the presence of these sugars suggests that the chemical ingredients necessary for biology were widespread in the early solar system.
• The absence of 2-deoxyribose, a DNA sugar, supports the “RNA world” hypothesis that early life relied on RNA before ....