NASA’s Curiosity rover has detected more than 20 carbon-containing compounds — including seven never before seen on Mars — in a sample collected from 3.5-billion-year-old clay-bearing sandstones in Gale Crater. A close-up of three holes Curiosity drilled into Martian rock at a location nicknamed Mary Anning in October 2020. Image credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech /…
A new analysis of isotopic signatures across planets and meteorite parent bodies suggests our home world formed entirely from inner solar system material, challenging long-standing theories of distant origins. An artist’s impression of the asteroid 2025 MN45. Image credit: NSF-DOE Vera C. Rubin Observatory / NOIRLab / SLAC / AURA / P. Marenfeld. “Our calculations…
Samples returned by JAXA’s Hayabusa-2 mission from the C-type asteroid (162173) Ryugu contain all five canonical nucleobases — purines (adenine and guanine) and pyrimidines (cytosine, thymine and uracil) — pointing to a cosmic origin for some of life’s fundamental chemistry. Hayabusa-2 image of the asteroid Ryugu as seen from a distance of 3.7 miles. A…
