Organic materials essential to life on Earth are found on the surface of an asteroid for the first time

New research from Royal Holloway has found water and organic matter on the surface of an asteroid sample returned by the inner solar system. It is the first time that organic matter, which could have provided chemical precursors to the origin of life on Earth, has been discovered on an asteroid.

The single grain sample was returned to Earth from the asteroid Itokawa by JAXA’s first Hayabusa mission in 2010. The sample shows that water and organic matter from the asteroid itself have chemically evolved over time. over time.

The research paper suggests that Itokawa has constantly evolved over billions of years by incorporating water and organic matter from alien extraterrestrial matter, just like Earth. In the past, the asteroid will have experienced extreme heating, dehydration and bursting due to a catastrophic impact. However, despite this, the asteroid came back together from the shattered fragments and rehydrated with water that was released by falling dust or carbon-rich meteorites.

This study shows that S-type asteroids, where most of Earth’s meteorites come from, like Itokawa, contain the raw ingredients of life. Analysis of this asteroid changes traditional views of the origin of life on Earth that previously focused heavily on carbon-rich Type C asteroids.

Dr Queenie Chan from the Department of Earth Sciences at Royal Holloway said: “The Hayabusa mission was a robotic spacecraft developed by the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency to return samples from a small asteroid close to Earth named Itokawa, for detailed analysis in laboratories on Earth.

“After being studied in detail by an international team of researchers, our analysis of a single grain, dubbed ‘Amazon’, preserved both primitive (unheated) and processed (heated) organic matter to less than ten microns (one thousandth of a centimeter). distance.

“The organic material that was heated indicates that the asteroid had been heated to over 600 ° C in the past. The presence of unheated organic material very close to it, means that the fall of primitive organic material has arrived at the surface of Itokawa after the asteroid had cooled. “

Dr Chan continues, “The Amazon study gave us a better understanding of how the asteroid has constantly evolved by incorporating newly arrived exogenous water and organic compounds.

“These findings are truly exciting because they reveal intricate details about the history of an asteroid and how its evolutionary path is so similar to that of prebiotic Earth.

“The success of this mission and the analysis of the sample returned to Earth have since paved the way for a more detailed analysis of the carbonaceous material returned from missions such as JAXA’s Hayabusa2 and NASA’s OSIRIS-Rex. These two missions identified exogenous elements. materials on target asteroids Ryugu and Bennu, respectively. Our results suggest that the mixing of materials is a common process in our solar system. ”

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