Life-Essential Sugars Detected in Asteroid Bennu Samples

On 2nd 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 ....
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