Two organic compounds essential for living organisms have been found in samples retrieved from the asteroid Ryugu, buttressed the notion that some ingredients crucial for the advent of life on Earth aboard rocks from space billions of years ago.
Scientists said on Tuesday they have detected uracil and niacin in rocks collected by the Hayabusa 2 spacecraft of the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency JAXA from two sites on Ryugu in 2019. Uracil is one of the chemical building blocks for RNA, a molecule that has directions for building and operating living organisms. Niacin is vital for their metabolism, as is Vitamin B 3 or nicotinic acid.
The Ryugu samples, which looked like dark-gray rubble, were transported 250 million kilometers back to Earth and returned to the planet's surface in a sealed capsule that landed in Australia's remote outback for analysis in Japan in 2020.
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