Breakthrough for NASA: American space agency discovers material older than the Sun on asteroid 200 million miles from Earth; details inside

A NASA aircraft scooped dust from asteroid Bennu, 200 million miles from Earth, leading to a pathbreaking discovery. The dust contains material older than the sun, marking a breakthrough by the American space agency. The first crucial study of the chemistry of the asteroid Bennu identified "presolar "grains"—stardust that condensed around dying stars billions of years ago.

A team of international scientists, which included a few from London's Natural History Museum, claimed that the samples are a snapshot of the early Solar System, more pristine than any meteorite on Earth, according to Sky News. As a part of NASA’s mission, the spacecraft Osiris Rex briefly touched the surface of Bennu with the help of a robotic arm to collect around 120 g of material, which was packed into a capsule and returned to Earth in 2023.

One of the authors of the study, Professor Jessica Barnes, from the University of Arizona, said, "Our data suggest that Bennu's parent asteroid formed in the outer parts of the solar system, possibly beyond the orbit of Saturn," as quoted by Sky News.


But during the analysis, a smorgasbord of other material was also found in the sample, including organic matter from the outer solar system and the interstellar medium, the gas and dust between stars. It also contained high-temperature materials that are thought to have formed close to the sun before moving away.

"We're looking at a unique snapshot of the outer solar system at [time of] the birth of our sun. Some of these grains have survived billions of years of Solar System evolution almost untouched and can tell us more about the environment in which planets were born,” Professor Sara Russell, planetary scientist at the Natural History Museum and another of the study's authors, said, according to SKY News.

According to the additional research carried out at the Natural History Museum, the evidence of water-driven chemical reactions that began over 4.5 billion years ago was discovered in the samples. The reactions date back before even the Earth was completely formed.

"Studying Bennu has given us the opportunity to investigate a novel type of space rock, and we are learning new things about it every day," said Professor Russell, according to SKY News. "The lack of reaction with the Earth's atmosphere has given us the opportunity to study the history of the asteroid and the evolution of the minerals it contains in incomparable detail," Russell added.