Scientists and Senators are Excited About the Sugars Found in the OSIRIS-REx Samples

It’s been over two years since the samples from Bennu gathered by OSIRIS-REx were returned to Earth. But there’s still plenty of novel science coming out of that 121.6 g of material. Three new papers were released recently that describe different aspects of that sample. One in particular, from Yoshihiro Furukawa of Tohoku University in Japan and their co-authors, has already attracted plenty of attention, including from US Senator (and former astronaut) Mark Kelly. It shows that all of the building blocks for early life were available on the asteroid – raising the chances that planets throughout the galaxy could be seeded with the abiotic precursors for life.