Science

Bennu asteroid reveals its contents to scientists − and clues to how the building blocks of life on Earth may have been seeded

NASA’s OSIRIS-REx mission returned samples from asteroid Bennu, revealing insights into life’s ingredients on Earth, paralleling those found in the Revelstoke meteorite’s analysis.

Published

1 year ago

February 3, 2025

The Conversation

This photo of asteroid Bennu is composed of 12 Polycam images collected on Dec. 2, 2024, by the OSIRIS-REx spacecraft. NASA

Timothy J McCoy, Smithsonian Institution and Sara Russell, Natural History Museum

A bright fireball streaked across the sky above mountains, glaciers and spruce forest near the town of Revelstoke in British Columbia, Canada, on the evening of March 31, 1965. Fragments of this meteorite, discovered by beaver trappers, fell over a lake. A layer of ice saved them from the depths and allowed scientists a peek into the birth of the solar system.

Nearly 60 years later, NASA’s OSIRIS-REx mission returned from space with a sample of an asteroid named Bennu, similar to the one that rained rocks over Revelstoke. Our research team has published a chemical analysis of those samples, providing insight into how some of the ingredients for life may have first arrived on Earth.

Born in the years bracketing the Revelstoke meteorite’s fall, the two of us have spent our careers in the meteorite collections of the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C., and the Natural History Museum in London. We’ve dreamed of studying samples from a Revelstoke-like asteroid collected by a spacecraft.

Then, nearly two decades ago, we began turning those dreams into reality. We joined NASA’s OSIRIS-REx mission team, which aimed to send a spacecraft to collect and return an asteroid sample to Earth. After those samples arrived on Sept. 24, 2023, we got to dive into a tale of rock, ice and water that hints at how life could have formed on Earth.

An illustration of a small spacecraft with solar panels and an extending arm hovers above an asteroid's rocky surface in space. — In this illustration, NASA’s OSIRIS-REx spacecraft collects a sample from the asteroid Bennu. NASA/Goddard/University of Arizona

The CI chondrites and asteroid Bennu

To learn about an asteroid – a rocky or metallic object in orbit around the Sun – we started with a study of meteorites.

Asteroids like Bennu are rocky or metallic objects in orbit around the Sun. Meteorites are the pieces of asteroids and other natural extraterrestrial objects that survive the fiery plunge to the Earth’s surface.

We really wanted to study an asteroid similar to a set of meteorites called chondrites, whose components formed in a cloud of gas and dust at the dawn of the solar system billions of years ago.

The Revelstoke meteorite is in a group called CI chondrites. Laboratory-measured compositions of CI chondrites are essentially identical, minus hydrogen and helium, to the composition of elements carried by convection from the interior of the Sun and measured in the outermost layer of the Sun. Since their components formed billions of years ago, they’re like chemically unchanged time capsules for the early solar system.

So, geologists use the chemical compositions of CI chondrites as the ultimate reference standard for geochemistry. They can compare the compositions of everything from other chondrites to Earth rocks. Any differences from the CI chondrite composition would have happened through the same processes that formed asteroids and planets.

CI chondrites are rich in clay and formed when ice melted in an ancient asteroid, altering the rock. They are also rich in prebiotic organic molecules. Some of these types of molecules are the building blocks for life.

This combination of rock, water and organics is one reason OSIRIS-REx chose to sample the organic-rich asteroid Bennu, where water and organic compounds essential to the origin of life could be found.

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Evaporites − the legacy of an ancient brine

Ever since the Bennu samples returned to Earth on Sept. 24, 2023, we and our colleagues on four continents have spent hundreds of hours studying them.

The instruments on the OSIRIS-REx spacecraft made observations of reflected light that revealed the most abundant minerals and organics when it was near asteroid Bennu. Our analyses in the laboratory found that the compositions of these samples lined up with those observations.

The samples are mostly water-rich clay, with sulfide, carbonate and iron oxide minerals. These are the same minerals found in CI chondrites like Revelstoke. The discovery of rare minerals within the Bennu samples, however, surprised both of us. Despite our decades of experience studying meteorites, we have never seen many of these minerals.

We found minerals dominated by sodium, including carbonates, sulfates, chlorides and fluorides, as well as potassium chloride and magnesium phosphate. These minerals don’t form just when water and rock react. They form when water evaporates.

We’ve never seen most of these sodium-rich minerals in meteorites, but they’re sometimes found in dried-up lake beds on Earth, like Searles Lake in California.

Bennu’s rocks formed 4.5 billion years ago on a larger parent asteroid. That asteroid was wet and muddy. Under the surface, pockets of water perhaps only a few feet across were evaporating, leaving the evaporite minerals we found in the sample. That same evaporation process also formed the ancient lake beds we’ve seen these minerals in on Earth.

Bennu’s parent asteroid likely broke apart 1 to 2 billion years ago, and some of the fragments came together to form the rubble pile we know as Bennu.

These minerals are also found on icy bodies in the outer solar system. Bright deposits on the dwarf planet Ceres, the largest body in the asteroid belt, contain sodium carbonate. The Cassini mission measured the same mineral in plumes on Saturn’s moon Enceladus.

We also learned that these minerals, formed when water evaporates, disappear when exposed to water once again – even with the tiny amount of water found in air. After studying some of the Bennu samples and their minerals, researchers stored the samples in air. That’s what we do with meteorites.

Unfortunately, we lost these minerals as moisture in the air on Earth caused them to dissolve. But that explains why we can’t find these minerals in meteorites that have been on Earth for decades to centuries.

Fortunately, most of the samples have been stored and transported in nitrogen, protected from traces of water in the air.

Until scientists were able to conduct a controlled sample return with a spacecraft and carefully curate and store the samples in nitrogen, we had never seen this set of minerals in a meteorite.

An unexpected discovery

Before returning the samples, the OSIRIS-REx spacecraft spent over two years making observations around Bennu. From that two years of work, researchers learned that the surface of the asteroid is covered in rocky boulders.

We could see that the asteroid is rich in carbon and water-bearing clays, and we saw veins of white carbonate a few feet long deposited by ancient liquid water. But what we couldn’t see from these observations were the rarer minerals.

We used an array of techniques to go through the returned sample one tiny grain at a time. These included CT scanning, electron microscopy and X-ray diffraction, each of which allowed us to look at the rock at a scale not possible on the asteroid.

Cooking up the ingredients for life

From the salts we identified, we could infer the composition of the briny water from which they formed and see how it changed over time, becoming more sodium-rich.

This briny water would have been an ideal place for new chemical reactions to take place and for organic molecules to form.

While our team characterized salts, our organic chemist colleagues were busy identifying the carbon-based molecules present in Bennu. They found unexpectedly high levels of ammonia, an essential building block of the amino acids that form proteins in living matter. They also found all five of the nucleobases that make up part of DNA and RNA.

Based on these results, we’d venture to guess that these briny pods of fluid would have been the perfect environments for increasingly complicated organic molecules to form, such as the kinds that make up life on Earth.

When asteroids like Bennu hit the young Earth, they could have provided a complete package of complex molecules and the ingredients essential to life, such as water, phosphate and ammonia. Together, these components could have seeded Earth’s initially barren landscape to produce a habitable world.

Without this early bombardment, perhaps when the pieces of the Revelstoke meteorite landed several billion years later, these fragments from outer space would not have arrived into a landscape punctuated with glaciers and trees.

Timothy J McCoy, Supervisory Research Geologist, Smithsonian Institution and Sara Russell, Professor of Planetary Sciences, Natural History Museum

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

aerospace

Boom Supersonic Update 2026: Overture Progress, XB-1 Milestones, and What’s Next

Boom Supersonic’s 2026 update: XB-1 test success, Overture production timeline, funding progress, and the challenges facing the return of commercial supersonic travel.

Published

22 hours ago

April 23, 2026

Rod Washington

By STM Daily News Staff

The race to bring back commercial supersonic travel is accelerating once again, led by Boom Supersonic, a Colorado-based aerospace company aiming to succeed where Concorde left off. As of 2026, the company has achieved meaningful technical milestones—but still faces significant financial, regulatory, and industrial hurdles.

Here’s a comprehensive look at where Boom stands today, and what it means for the future of high-speed air travel.

Boom Supersonic’s 2026 update: XB-1 test success, Overture production timeline, funding progress, and the challenges facing the return of commercial supersonic travel. — Image Credit: Boom Supersonic

XB-1 Demonstrator Completes Historic Test Program

Boom’s experimental aircraft, the XB-1, has successfully completed its flight test campaign, marking a critical step toward validating the company’s supersonic technology.

Achieved multiple supersonic flights in 2025
Demonstrated aerodynamic stability and performance
Tested “boomless cruise” capabilities to reduce sonic disturbances

The XB-1 program served as a scaled demonstrator for the company’s flagship commercial jet, proving that modern materials, software, and engine integration can support efficient supersonic flight.

With testing complete, the aircraft is expected to be preserved as a prototype, representing a turning point in private-sector aerospace innovation.

Overture: Boom’s Commercial Supersonic Jet

The centerpiece of Boom’s vision is the Overture, a next-generation supersonic passenger aircraft designed to carry between 60 and 80 passengers at speeds approaching Mach 1.7.

Current projected timeline:

Prototype rollout: Targeted for 2026
First flight: Expected around 2027
Commercial service entry: Late 2020s (estimated 2029–2030)

Unlike Concorde, which catered primarily to elite travelers, Boom aims to position Overture with business-class pricing, potentially expanding access to faster global travel.

The aircraft is also being designed with sustainability in mind, including compatibility with sustainable aviation fuel (SAF).

Funding and Financial Momentum

In recent developments, Boom Supersonic secured an additional $100 million in funding, reinforcing investor confidence in the company’s long-term vision.

However, building a supersonic passenger aircraft remains one of the most capital-intensive challenges in aviation. Continued fundraising and strategic partnerships will be essential as the company moves from prototype to production.

Boomless Cruise: A Potential Game-Changer

One of Boom’s most significant innovations is its focus on “boomless cruise,” a method of flying supersonically without producing an audible sonic boom on the ground.

If proven viable at scale, this technology could influence regulatory changes—particularly in the United States, where overland supersonic flight is currently restricted.

The ability to fly faster-than-sound over land would unlock major domestic routes, dramatically reducing travel times between cities like New York and Los Angeles.

Manufacturing Challenges and Delays

Despite technical progress, Boom’s manufacturing ambitions face uncertainty. A planned production facility in North Carolina has experienced delays, raising questions about when large-scale assembly will begin.

Scaling production from prototype to commercial aircraft remains one of the most difficult phases of any aerospace program, requiring supply chain coordination, workforce development, and regulatory alignment.

Industry Skepticism Remains

While Boom has secured interest from major airlines, skepticism persists within the aviation industry.

Key concerns include:

Certification complexity and regulatory approval timelines
Operational costs versus ticket pricing
Long-term demand for supersonic travel

Even airline executives have expressed cautious optimism, with some suggesting the project’s success remains uncertain.

Boom Supersonic’s Overture: Supersonic Travel in the Making (2025 Update)

The Bigger Picture: A Defining Decade for Supersonic Travel

Boom Supersonic has moved beyond concept and into real-world testing, demonstrating that modern supersonic flight is technically achievable.

However, the next phase—bringing Overture to market—will determine whether supersonic passenger travel becomes a viable industry once again or remains an ambitious experiment.

If successful, Boom could redefine global travel times. If not, it will join a long list of bold aerospace ventures that struggled to overcome economic reality.

Sources and External Links

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Space and Tech

I’ve fired one of America’s most powerful lasers – here’s what a shot day looks like

A lead scientist takes you inside the Texas Petawatt at UT Austin, where hours of careful alignment and safety checks build to a single, breath-holding laser shot that briefly creates star-like conditions in a vacuum chamber.

Published

4 days ago

April 20, 2026

The Conversation

file 20260410 57 e6icf4.jpg?ixlib=rb 4.1 — Inside a laser clean room. The beam is contained within the blue pipe. Ahmed Helal

Ahmed Helal, The University of Texas at Austin

If you walk across the open yard in front of the Physics, Math and Astronomy building at the University of Texas at Austin, you’ll see a 17-story tower and a huge L-shaped building. What you won’t see is what’s underneath you. Two floors below ground, behind heavy double doors stamped with a logo that most students have never noticed, sits one of the most powerful lasers in the United States.

I was the lead laser scientist on the Texas Petawatt, or TPW as we called it, from 2020 to 2024. Texas Petawatt, which is currently closed due to funding cuts, was a government-funded research center where scientists from across the country applied for time to use specialized equipment. It was part of LaserNetUS, a Department of Energy network of high-power laser labs.

This type of laser takes a tiny pulse of light, stretches it out so it doesn’t blast optics to pieces, and amplifies it until, for a brief instant, it carries more power than the entire U.S. electrical grid. Then it compresses the pulse back to a trillionth of a second to create a star in a vacuum chamber.

On a typical shot day, the target might be a piece of metal foil thinner than a human hair, a jet of gas or a tiny plastic pellet – each designed to answer a different scientific question.

Scientists from across the country applied for time on TPW to study everything from the physics of stellar interiors and fusion energy to new approaches for cancer treatment.

Most people hear about petawatt lasers and picture something out of a movie. A “shot day” is actually hours of quiet, repetitive work followed by about 10 seconds where nobody breathes.

I now work as a research scientist at the University of Texas-Austin, studying the interaction of lasers with different materials, but a typical shot day during my time running TPW would look like this:

7 a.m.

I arrive two hours before the first scheduled shot. I put on my gown, boots and hairnet and step into the cold clean room. The laser doesn’t just turn on. You coax it awake.

I start with the oscillator, a small box that generates the first seed of light. I write down the parameters that define how the laser will behave during the shot: energy, center frequency, vacuum pressure in the tubes, cooling water level and flow. At this stage, they are fixed regardless of the experiment. The laser must perform the same way every time before the science can begin. Then I fire up the pump laser that will amplify this tiny pulse from nanojoules to about half a joule.

A diagram showing the layout of a large laser — The anatomy of a petawatt laser. A tiny pulse starts at the oscillator, gets stretched in time to avoid damaging the optics, is amplified through progressively larger stages, then is compressed back down to a trillionth of a second inside the vacuum chamber at right. Ahmed Helal, Fourni par l’auteur

The system needs at least 30 minutes to stabilize. During that time, I check alignment through every pinhole and every camera along the beam path. A slight misalignment at this stage isn’t just a problem; it can be catastrophic – a mispointed beam at full power can burn through optics that take months to source and replace, setting the entire laser back.

Building the beam

Once the system is warmed up, I send the beam into the first amplifier: a glass rod surrounded by bright flash lamps that pump light into the glass – like charging a battery. With each pass, the beam absorbs energy from the glass and grows stronger. Then the beam travels into a larger rod, where it makes four passes, picking up more energy each time until it reaches about 12 joules, roughly the energy of a ball thrown hard across a room.

This process alone takes the better part of an hour, most of it spent checking and confirming alignment and energy at each stage.

I expand the beam and send it through the final stage: the disk amplifiers. Two amplifiers, each consisting of two massive 30-centimeter glass disks, are pumped by a huge bank of flash lamps powered by capacitor banks – essentially giant batteries that store electrical energy and release it in a sudden burst. They are so large that they have their own room on a separate floor. Fast optical shutters between each stage act as gates, controlling exactly when and where the beam travels.

The shot

When the experimental team confirms that the target is in position, it asks me to prepare for a system shot. I run through the long checklist. We test the shutters and switch to system shot mode. Every monitor in the facility changes to display the same message – “System Shot Mode” – and flashes red.

A desk with 11 monitors displaying graphs. — The Texas Petawatt control room allows scientists to track a variety of parameters and metrics. On the left is the big red emergency stop button. Ahmed Helal

I lean into the microphone at the control desk, a vintage piece that looks like it belongs in a World War II radio room, and announce that we’re going into a system shot. Then I open the compressor beam dump: a heavy glass plate that normally blocks the beam from reaching the target. It takes about two minutes to move.

“Sweeping, sweeping for a system shot.”

The announcement goes out over speakers across the facility. I grab a small interlock key, put on my laser safety goggles and head downstairs. I walk a specific pattern through every room, checking that nobody is still inside. As I go, I lock each door with the key. If anyone opens one of those doors after I’ve locked them, the entire shot sequence aborts.

A microphone on a stand sitting on a desk. — Texas Petawatt scientists make announcements about the shot through a microphone in the control room. Ahmed Helal

Back in the control room, I sit down and start charging the capacitor banks. At this point, there’s no going back except for an emergency shutdown, and that means losing the shot and waiting for everything to cool down.

“Charging.”

The room goes silent. Everyone’s eyes are on the monitors. Nobody talks.

I typically will share a glance with the researcher whose project the shot is for – today it’s Joe, a visiting scientist from Los Alamos National Lab, who designed the target we’re about to vaporize. He’s gripping his coffee cup like it owes him money. I turn back to the console.

“Charge complete. Firing system shot in three, two, one. Fire.”

I press the button. A loud thud rolls through the building as all that stored energy dumps into the beam. The monitors freeze, capturing everything at the moment of the shot: beam profiles, spectra, diagnostics – these metrics provide a full picture of exactly how the laser performed and whether the shot was clean. Downstairs, in the vacuum chamber, a spot smaller than a human hair just reached temperatures measured in millions of degrees.

I lean back in my chair and start recording laser parameters as everyone exhales. A radiation safety officer heads down first to check readings around the target chamber before anyone else can enter. The experimental team follows to collect data.

Sometimes it all works perfectly. Sometimes a shutter fails to open and you lose the shot.

For example, one afternoon in 2023, we’d spent three hours preparing for a high-priority shot. Target aligned. Capacitors charged. I pressed the button and heard nothing. A shutter had failed somewhere in the chain. The monitors stayed frozen, showing black. Nobody said anything. I wrote SHOT FAILED in the logbook and started the hourlong cooldown sequence. That’s the part they don’t show in movies: sitting in silence, waiting to try again. We got the shot four hours later.

This anticipation is all part of the job: hours of patience for 10 seconds you never quite get used to. Everything happens underneath a campus where thousands of people walk above, unaware that for a fraction of a second, a tiny point of matter hotter than the surface of the Sun just existed below their feet.

Ahmed Helal, Research Scientist, The University of Texas at Austin

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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