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CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida: Asteroid samples fetched by NASA hold not only the pristine building blocks for life but also the salty remains of an ancient water world, scientists reported Wednesday.
The findings provide the strongest evidence yet that asteroids may have planted the seeds of life on Earth and that these ingredients were mingling with water almost right from the start.
“That’s the kind of environment that could have been essential to the steps that lead from elements to life,” said the Smithsonian Institution’s Tim McCoy, one of the lead study authors.
NASA’s Osiris-Rex spacecraft returned 122 grams (4 ounces) of dust and pebbles from the near-Earth asteroid Bennu, delivering the sample canister to the Utah desert in 2023 before swooping off after another space rock. It remains the biggest cosmic haul from beyond the moon. The two previous asteroid sample missions, by Japan, yielded considerably less material.
Small amounts of Bennu’s precious black grains — leftovers from the solar system’s formation 4.5 billion years ago — were doled out to the two separate research teams whose studies appeared in the journals Nature and Nature Astronomy. But it was more than enough to tease out the sodium-rich minerals and confirm the presence of amino acids, nitrogen in the form of ammonia and even parts of the genetic code.
Some if not all of the delicate salts found at Bennu — similar to what’s in the dry lakebeds of California’s Mojave Desert and Africa’s Sahara — would be stripped away if present in falling meteorites.
“This discovery was only possible by analyzing samples that were collected directly from the asteroid then carefully preserved back on Earth,” the Institute of Science Tokyo’s Yasuhito Sekine, who was not involved in the studies, said in an accompanying editorial.
Combining the ingredients of life with an environment of sodium-rich salt water, or brines, “that’s really the pathway to life,” said McCoy, the National Museum of Natural History’s curator of meteorites. “These processes probably occurred much earlier and were much more widespread than we had thought before.”
NASA’s Daniel Glavin said one of the biggest surprises was the relatively high abundance of nitrogen, including ammonia. While all of the organic molecules found in the Bennu samples have been identified before in meteorites, Glavin said the ones from Bennu are valid — “real extraterrestrial organic material formed in space and not a result of contamination from Earth.”
Bennu — a rubble pile just one-third of a mile (one-half of a kilometer) across — was originally part of a much larger asteroid that got clobbered by other space rocks. The latest results suggest this parent body had an extensive underground network of lakes or even oceans, and that the water evaporated away, leaving behind the salty clues.
Sixty labs around the world are analyzing bits of Bennu as part of initial studies, said the University of Arizona’s Dante Lauretta, the mission’s chief scientist who took part in both studies.
Most of the $1 billion mission’s cache has been set aside for future analysis. Scientists stress more testing is needed to better understand the Bennu samples, as well as more asteroid and comet sample returns. China plans to launch an asteroid sample return mission this year.
Many are pushing for a mission to collect rocks and dirt from the potentially waterlogged dwarf planet Ceres in the main asteroid belt. Jupiter’s moon Europa and Saturn’s moon Enceladus also beckon as enticing water worlds. Meanwhile, NASA has core samples awaiting pickup at Mars, but their delivery is on hold while the space agency studies the quickest and cheapest way to get them here.
“Are we alone?” McCoy said. “That’s one of the questions we’re trying to answer.”

NEW YORK: Global arabica coffee prices hit record highs above $3.60 per lb on Wednesday as Brazil, by far the world’s largest producer, has few beans left to sell and as worries over its upcoming harvest persist.
Dealers said 70 percent-80 percent of Brazil’s current arabica harvest has been sold and new trades are slow. Brazil produces nearly half the world’s arabica beans, a high-end variety typically used in roast and ground blends.
The country’s recent weather has been more favorable after a severe drought last year. Still, the upcoming crop will be 4.4 percent smaller than the previous, according to Brazilian food supply agency Conab.
“Global coffee supplies remain limited. Vietnam is progressing slowly with sales of its robusta crop. The arabica harvested in Central America and Colombia is taking longer to get to the market, and Brazilian farmers don’t show much interest in selling more,” said broker HedgePoint Global Markets on Wednesday.
Arabica coffee futures on the ICE exchange, a contract used globally to price physical coffee trades, hit a record high of $3.6945 per lb earlier, bringing gains for the year up nearly 15 percent. The contract later closed up 2.5 percent at $3.6655 per lb.
Robusta coffee, a generally cheaper variety used mostly to make instant coffee, rose 0.9 percent at $5,609 a metric ton.
Coffee exports from India, the world’s fifth largest robusta producer, are expected to decline more than 10 percent in 2025 due to lower production and reduced carry-forward stocks from last season’s crop.
Dealers said farmers in both India and Vietnam, the world’s top robusta producer, are holding back sales in anticipation of further price gains and that in Brazil, some 80-90 percent of the current harvest has been sold.
Broker Sucden said in a report that Brazilian farmers are also prioritizing local sales over dollar-priced exports even though the latter fetch more money as their financial position has improved significantly over the past two years.
It added the country’s current buffer stocks have eroded to an estimated 500,000 bags versus some 8 million bags traditionally, meaning any additional weather disruptions could have an outsized impact on global coffee prices.
Sucden sees the global coffee market recording a fourth successive deficit this season.
In other soft commodities traded, raw sugar rose 1.1 percent at 19.45 cents per lb, rebounding strongly from last week’s five-month low, while white sugar gained 2.2 percent at $522.90 a ton.
New York cocoa futures rose 3.3 percent to $11,745 a ton, while London cocoa gained 1.6 percent to 9,138 pounds per ton.