Compounds critical to life found on ancient asteroid

On Sept. 24, 2023, the OSIRIS-REx spacecraft swung past Earth to drop off precious cargo: 121.6 g of rocks and dust collected from the surface of the asteroid Bennu . Born from the rocky detritus of an impact-shattered larger asteroid, Bennu is a relic of our early solar system. As such, scientists expect it to provide insight into the kinds of life-seeding chemistries that were possible on early Earth. Researchers have now published two complementary papers describing the inorganic and organic composition of small portions of the Bennu sample ( Nature 2025, DOI: 10.1038 /s41586-024-08495-6 ; Nat. Astron. 2025, DOI: 10.1038/s41550-024-02472-9 ). When Tim McCoy, curator of meteorites at the National Museum of Natural History , and his team began analyzing the minerals in the Bennu sample, they found something unexpected: sodium carbonate. “I worked on meteorites for 35 years,” McCoy says. “I’ve never seen sodium carbonate.” McCoy turned to