Tag: Bennu,NASA,astrobiology,organic chemistry,space exploration,OSIRIS-REx,cosmic dust,origins of life
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Sugars on Asteroid Bennu and the Search for Life
When NASA’s OSIRIS-REx spacecraft brought home samples from Asteroid Bennu, most people expected dust, rock, maybe a few carbon compounds. What scientists found instead—sugars like ribose, lyxose, and glycose—was far more startling. These are not just random molecules. They are the same types of sugars that form the backbone of RNA, the molecule that carries