The flowing of molten rocks through small cracks in the heart of volcanoes may have been a perfect environment to forge the building blocks of life on Earth. These chemicals—called biopolymers—are an ...

Sending a spacecraft to a near-Earth asteroid, gathering dust and rock from its surface, and returning the rare cache to our planet has been one of NASA’s boldest feats yet. And now, the daring OSIRIS ...

New research warns that spacecraft exhaust may rapidly pollute the lunar ice that might hold secrets of early life.

Scientists have discovered the building blocks of life in samples retrieved from a distant asteroid. In January 2025, scientists announced the discovery of organic molecules— the building blocks of ...

Two papers published at the end of January in Nature and Nature Astronomy provide evidence about the origin of life. The analyses and inferences from their results affect the disciplines of biology, ...

This artist’s concept shows NASA’s OSIRIS-REx spacecraft descending towards asteroid Bennu to collect a sample of the asteroid’s surface. NASA/Goddard ...

Life on Earth relies on molecular building blocks to make DNA and proteins. Scientists have long wondered how prevalent these precursors were at the birth of our solar system. A sample of dust and ...

The building blocks for organic matter have been discovered on the asteroid Bennu, as deatiled in a new study in the journal Nature Astronomy. The research gives new insight into how life originated ...