"Space gum" and sugars discovered in asteroid Bennu samples, NASA reveals

Samples taken from the asteroid Bennu are continuing to shed light on the origins of the solar system.

Scientists have been studying the samples since NASA's Osiris-REx spacecraft carried them back to Earth in 2020 and recently discovered that that they contain sugars and "a gum-like substance not seen before in astromaterials," NASA said.

The revelations — and how they can help answer big questions about the beginnings of life — are described in three new papers published Tuesday by the journals Nature Geosciences and Nature Astronomy.

An artistic visualization of the OSIRIS-REx spacecraft descending towards asteroid Bennu to collect a sample. NASA/Goddard/University of Arizona

In the first paper, scientists led by Yoshihiro Furukawa of Japan's Tohoku University focus on sugar