The discovery of all five nucleobases on Ryugu strengthens the idea that life’s molecular ingredients formed in space before reaching Earth. A new study reports that samples from the asteroid Ryugu contain all five fundamental nucleobases, the molecular “letters” of life. Tiny asteroid grains can preserve chemical clues about the ingredients that may have helped [...]
A process called ‘hot bottom burning’ helped scientists determine the age of 3I/ATLAS.
The main-belt asteroid Donaldjohanson, a heavily cratered fragment born from a catastrophic breakup 155 million years ago, appears to wobble through space while preserving clues to the migration of water-rich worlds in the early Solar System, according to a new analysis of images and data from NASA’s Lucy spacecraft.
The post Asteroid Donaldjohanson is Wobbly, Peanut-Shaped Object with Watery Past, Scientists Say appeared first on Sci.News: Breaking Science News.
Scientists have released a series of previously unseen images of the asteroid Donaldjohanson captured by NASA’s Lucy spacecraft during an April 2025 flyby.
The team behind the photos’ release said the Lucy spacecraft, which was named for the infamous hominin fossil discovered by anthropologist Donald Johanson, captured critical details about the small main-belt asteroid’s surface features and motion that could help clarify the space rock’s origin and evolution.
The data could also inform studies of the Solar System’s formation, including how asteroids move and evolve over extended timescales.
According to a statement from team leader Simone Marchi and colleagues, images captured during the deep-space rendezvous revealed that the oddly shaped rock consists of two cratered ‘lobes’ connected by a comparatively smooth central “neck” section. The researchers noted that Donaldjohanson measured over 8.8 kilometers by 4.4 km by 3.1 km.
An analysis of the surface features helped the team pinpoint the asteroid’s likeliest age to a set of asteroids belonging to the Erigone family, a group that broke apart a larger “parent” body into smaller fragments. The team notes that this ancient age “implies that DJ is a fragment of a larger parent body that was destroyed in a collision about 155 million years ago.”
Although an examination of the craters helped place the asteroid’s likely age, they noted that craters less than 0.4 kilometers “have been preferentially erased.” The researchers suggest that this preferential erasure of smaller craters might have been caused by “seismic shaking” following a more recent impact event.
Along with surface features, the newly released images revealed the asteroid’s motion. Specifically, the team determined that Donaldjohanson has a slow, tumbling movement rather than a simple rotation.” Instead of an impact, the team suspects that the asteroid’s motion could have been produced gradually by “torques” resulting from thermal radiation.
“DJ rotates slowly in a tumbling state, likely owing to spin-down by radiative forces,” the team writes.
A spectral analysis of the rock’s cratered surface also revealed a similar composition to other Erigone family asteroids, particularly the presence of iron-bearing phyllosilicates. The team notes these phyllosilicates indicate an “aqueous evolution” on the parent body. However, they also note that the water-induced mineral alteration was likely halted “at an early stage” due to insufficient water or heat.
Although the newly released Lucy images were captured in 2025, the team notes that the Donaldjohanson flyby mission was one leg of a larger set of 8 planned Lucy asteroid flybys, with the entire set expected to take 12 years to complete.
“Over its 12-year mission, Lucy will explore a record-breaking number of asteroids: it will fly by three in the belt of asteroids that circle the Sun between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter, and then eight Trojans, which includes five asteroid targets and the satellites of three of those,” a NASA statement explained. “Lucy also will fly by Earth three times to get a push from its gravity, making it the first spacecraft to return to the vicinity of Earth from the outer solar system.”
The study “The Lucy flyby of asteroid (52246) Donaldjohanson: A bilobed object with a tumbling rotation” was published in Science.
Christopher Plain is a Science Fiction and Fantasy novelist and Head Science Writer at The Debrief. Follow and connect with him on X, learn about his books at plainfiction.com, or email him directly at christopher@thedebrief.org.
A spacecraft developed by Tsinghua University is set to join international missions to study the asteroid Apophis during its close approach to Earth in 2029.
The post Chinese university-led mission to study asteroid Apophis during close encounter with Earth appeared first on SpaceNews.
China’s Tianwen-2 spacecraft has carried out a series of small propulsive maneuvers following a main burn June 7, setting up an asteroid rendezvous in July.
The post Tianwen-2 makes series of burns on approach to asteroid, according to radio tracking appeared first on SpaceNews.
Scientists found evidence that Chicxulub remained hydrothermally active four times longer than earlier estimates.
Planetary scientists analyzing a lunar meteorite known as Northwest Africa (NWA) 12593 have uncovered evidence of an asteroid impact that occurred 3.5 billion years ago on the Moon, helping to reconstruct a period of intense bombardment that left lasting marks across the inner Solar System.
The post Lunar Meteorite Preserves Evidence of Colossal Asteroid Strike appeared first on Sci.News: Breaking Science News.
The ancient history of our planet’s impact events is coming into focus, thanks to researchers who have triangulated similarly aged impacts on Earth, the Moon, and the asteroid 4 Vesta in a new study.
The lunar meteorite NWA 12593 correlates not only with impact events observed across three locations in our solar system but also contains evidence of three separate impact events that occurred at different times.
The findings, revealed in a recent paper published in Geology, show that scientists are using this new impact data to fill in the volatile early-Earth period when life began.
The Archean period, roughly 4 to 2.5 billion years ago, was a consequential time from which our earliest fossil records date, corresponding to around 3.5 billion years ago. Researchers believe that life likely first arose at this time, yet it may have faced adversity from bombardment by space rocks between 3.2 and 3.5 billion years ago, although scientists disagree on how intense this impact activity was.
Our planet’s geological activity eventually destroys evidence of the ancient past through erosion, subduction, and burial, continually reshaping the surface. Yet those early years are essential to understanding the origins of water, atmospheres, and life on Earth.
“On Earth, the first fossil evidence of life shows up around 3.5 billion years ago, meaning that life is emerging and evolving before then. The question that we often have, even going back further, is what was the impact record when life was emerging?” said lead author Carolyn Crow, a planetary scientist at the University of Colorado Boulder.
“It is important for understanding how life is taking hold, how life is emerging,” Crow added. “The cadence of these catastrophic events is an important part of the equation.”
While Earth’s surface is constantly renewed by geological processes, our nearest significant neighbor, the Moon, is much more stable, retaining its geological record for longer periods. Because of this, lunar meteorites provide a resource for scientists to understand the impact of Earth and the inner solar system by matching them to known impacts on our planet and in the asteroid belt.
For the recent study, the team focused on a lunar meteorite discovered in northwest Africa, designated NWA 12593, and identified three separate impact events in a single sample.
Radiometric dating traced the oldest to 3.5 million years ago, intriguingly close to the time of the earliest known fossils. Extraordinary in power, this impact produced the mineral zirconia by melting the lunar surface into a lava-like flow. Without the precise laboratory conditions required to produce stable cubic zirconia, only traces of mineral remained in the sample.
According to the team, the first impact aligns with previously known impact events on Earth, and the fourth-largest object in the asteroid belt, 4 Vesta. It’s extremely rare to find such corresponding evidence between three bodies, providing important data on this time of frequent collisions.
“It’s not very common, which is why we’re very excited about it,” says Crow. “It’s pretty rare to have all three records line up like this.”
Evidence of later impacts included breccia composed of large, angular, broken mineral fragments cemented together. The team believes the breccia resulted from a second impact that struck the melt sheet formed by the first.
“Breccias are similar to what you would see if you went and chipped out a chunk of concrete. You would see all these little rocks, and then it’s fused together by the cement,” says Crow. “But the meteorite is fused together by the impact process. You get all these chunks of different kinds of rocks that the impact hit into. These all get mixed up, and then it gets fused together like your concrete sidewalk.”
As for the third impact, the evidence for this is the meteorite’s mere presence on Earth; an event that occurred some time after the first would have ejected the lunar breccia, the researchers say, allowing it to eventually land on our planet.
In total, the sample reveals an intriguing impact history, preserving a record of bombardment that provides solid evidence for a flurry of activity in the inner solar system during a violent chapter in the early history of our Solar System.
The paper, “Three-Body Evidence of Ca. 3.7 Ga to 3.2 Ga Bombardment Across the Inner Solar System,” appeared in Geology on May 12, 2026.
Ryan Whalen covers science and technology for The Debrief. He holds an MA in History and a Master of Library and Information Science with a certificate in Data Science. He can be contacted at ryan@thedebrief.org, and follow him on Twitter @mdntwvlf.
A new study suggests that the intense asteroid bombardment that struck the young Earth billions of years ago may have played an important role in creating the conditions needed for life to emerge. Today, asteroid impacts are often associated with destruction and mass extinctions. But during Earth’s earliest history, these violent collisions may have helped […]
The post Ancient asteroid impacts may have helped life begin on Earth appeared first on Knowridge Science Report.
From high-speed battering rams to gravity tractors, the technology exists to protect the planet. The question is whether humanity will act in time — and in concert.
By studying fungal microfossils in 66-million-year-old rock samples from the Denver Basin in Colorado, Johns Hopkins University microbiologists have confirmed that the dinosaur-killing asteroid impact triggered a worldwide fungal takeover, and uncovered a second, previously unknown ecological crisis just before it.
The post Fungi Bloomed Twice around End-Cretaceous Mass Extinction appeared first on Sci.News: Breaking Science News.
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