Japan’s education ministry says
that more than 20 types of amino acids were detected in samples of an asteroid
The discovery of this star which has been nicknamed 'Earendel' sets a new benchmark for NASA as the star was formed in the first billion years after the Universe was formed.
The detection is the first evidence
that amino acids exist on asteroids in space and has implications for understanding how such vital organic molecules arrived on Earth.
The Hayabusa2
spacecraft collected the samples from an asteroid named Ryugu.
he Japan Aerospace
Exploration Agency (JAXA) probe landed on Ryugu—nearly 200 million miles from Earth—in 2019
Ryugu is a carbon-rich fragment
of a larger asteroid that formed from the same gas and dust that gave way to our solar system.
Ryugu’s surface offer scientists
a look at what material was floating around in the early solar system over 4 billion years ago.