About

• Bennu is a relatively small asteroid that passes close to Earth about every six years.
• It is a near-earth asteroid that had formed near the dawn of the solar system roughly 4.5 billion years ago.
• Bennu makes one orbit around the Sun every 1.2 years.
• It was the target of NASA’s OSIRIS-REx mission to collect an asteroid sample and bring it to Earth.

Why in news?

• • Rock and dust samples retrieved by NASA from the asteroid Bennu exhibit some of the chemical building blocks of life.
  • The OSIRIS-REx spacecraft in 2020 collected the samples from asteroid Bennu. The samples were delivered to the earth in 2023.

• Analysis of the samples:

• • 14 of the 20 organic compounds called amino acids that are used to make proteins were present in the samples 
  • All five nucleobases (the genetic components of DNA and RNA in all life on the earth) were present in the samples.
• The detection of these key building blocks of life in the Bennu samples supports the theory that asteroids and their fragments seeded the early earth with the raw ingredients that led to the emergence of life.