Connect with us

Published

on

Two organic compounds essential for living organisms have been found in samples retrieved from the asteroid Ryugu, buttressing the notion that some ingredients crucial for the advent of life arrived on Earth aboard rocks from space billions of years ago.

Scientists said on Tuesday they detected uracil and niacin in rocks obtained by the Japanese Space Agency’s Hayabusa2 spacecraft from two sites on Ryugu in 2019. Uracil is one of the chemical building blocks for RNA, a molecule carrying directions for building and operating living organisms. Niacin, also called Vitamin B3 or nicotinic acid, is vital for their metabolism.

The Ryugu samples, which looked like dark-gray rubble, were transported 155 million miles (250 million km) back to Earth and returned to our planet’s surface in a sealed capsule that landed in 2020 in Australia’s remote outback for analysis in Japan.

Scientists long have pondered about the conditions necessary for life to arise after Earth formed about 4.5 billion years ago. The new findings fit well with the hypothesis that bodies like comets, asteroids and meteorites that bombarded early Earth seeded the young planet with compounds that helped pave the way for the first microbes.

Scientists previously detected key organic molecules in carbon-rich meteorites found on Earth. But there was the question of whether these space rocks had been contaminated by exposure to the Earth’s environment after landing.

“Our key finding is that uracil and niacin, both of which are of biological significance, are indeed present in extraterrestrial environments and they may have been provided to the early Earth as a component of asteroids and meteorites. We suspect they had a role in prebiotic evolution on Earth and possibly for the emergence of first life,” said astrochemist Yasuhiro Oba of Hokkaido University in Japan, lead author of the research published in the journal Nature Communications.

“These molecules on Ryugu were recovered in a pristine extraterrestrial setting,” Oba said. “It was directly sampled on the asteroid Ryugu and returned to Earth, and finally to laboratories without any contact with terrestrial contaminants.”

RNA, short for ribonucleic acid, would not be possible without uracil. RNA, a molecule present in all living cells, is vital in coding, regulation and activity of genes. RNA has structural similarities to DNA, a molecule that carries an organism’s genetic blueprint.

Niacin is important in underpinning metabolism and can help produce the “energy” that powers living organisms.

The researchers extracted uracil, niacin and some other organic compounds in the Ryugu samples by soaking the material in hot water and then performing analyses called liquid chromatography and high-resolution mass spectrometry.

Organic astrochemist and study co-author Yoshinori Takano of the Japan Agency for Marine-Earth Science and Technology (JAMSTEC) said he is now looking forward to the results of analyses on samples being returned to Earth in September from another asteroid. The U.S. space agency NASA during its OSIRIS-REx mission collected samples in 2020 from the asteroid Bennu.

Oba said uracil and niacin were found at both landing sites on Ryugu, which is about a half-mile (900 meters) in diameter and is classified as a near-Earth asteroid. The concentrations of the compounds were higher at one of the sites than the other.

The sample from the site with the lower concentrations was derived from surface material more susceptible to degradation induced by energetic particles darting through space, Oba said. The sample from the other site was mainly derived from subsurface material more protected from degradation, Oba added.

Asteroids are rocky primordial bodies that formed in the early solar system. The researchers suggest that the organic compounds found on Ryugu may have been formed with the help of chemical reactions caused by starlight in icy materials residing in interstellar space.

© Thomson Reuters 2023


After facing headwinds in India last year, Xiaomi is all set to take on the competition in 2023. What are the company’s plans for its wide product portfolio and its Make in India commitment in the country? We discuss this and more on Orbital, the Gadgets 360 podcast. Orbital is available on Spotify, Gaana, JioSaavn, Google Podcasts, Apple Podcasts, Amazon Music and wherever you get your podcasts.
Affiliate links may be automatically generated – see our ethics statement for details.

Continue Reading

Science

SpaceX to Fly Italian Science Experiments to Mars on Starship in 2026

Published

on

By

SpaceX to Fly Italian Science Experiments to Mars on Starship in 2026

SpaceX has signed a first-of-its-kind deal with the Italian Space Agency (ASI) to fly Italian science experiments to Mars aboard its Starship rocket. ASI President Teodoro Valente announced that ASI will send its experiments on SpaceX’s first commercial Mars flights. The payloads will include a plant-growth module, a meteorology station and a radiation detector, which will collect data during the roughly six-month journey and on the Martian surface. This landmark agreement represents a new milestone in Mars exploration.

Italian Scientific Experiments on Starship

According to the ASI officials, the payloads include “a plant growth experiment, a meteorological monitoring station and a radiation sensor”. The plant experiment is designed to test how plants grow during the months-long trip and under Mars-like conditions, which will inform future life-support systems. The meteorological module will record Martian weather (temperature, pressure, etc.) to improve understanding of Mars’s climate. The radiation sensor will measure cosmic rays and solar particles during the flight and on Mars’ surface, providing data essential for assessing astronaut safety.

Mission Timeline and Commercial Partnership Implications

Starship has completed only suborbital test flights (nine as of mid-2025) and has not yet reached orbit. SpaceX is targeting the Nov–Dec 2026 Mars launch window, but CEO Elon Musk cautions that “a lot needs to go right” and success is far from guaranteed. Starship itself is a massive two-stage fully reusable rocket built specifically for Mars missions. Meeting these targets depends on completing Starship’s development and test flights.

For SpaceX, the contract turns Starship into a Mars transportation service. The deal lets Italy send experiments to Mars without developing its own rocket. More broadly, it exemplifies a new era in which countries and organizations can purchase payload flights on commercial rockets, benefiting future Mars research.

Continue Reading

Science

SWOT Satellite Captures Tsunami Wave After Kamchatka Quake

Published

on

By

SWOT Satellite Captures Tsunami Wave After Kamchatka Quake

The U.S.-French SWOT (Surface Water and Ocean Topography) satellite captured the leading edge of a tsunami wave that rolled through the Pacific Ocean on July 30, 2025 (11:25 a.m. local time), in the wake of a magnitude 8.8 earthquake that struck Russia’s Kamchatka Peninsula. The satellite captured the data about 70 minutes after the earthquake struck. SWOT is a designed to map oceans and freshwater on Earth. The satellite recorded data from the tsunami as it passed through the deep ocean.

About SWOT

According to NASA, The SWOT satellite was jointly developed by NASA and the French space agency CNES (Centre National d’Études Spatiales). NASA provided the Ka-band radar interferometer (KaRIn) instrument, a GPS science receiver, a laser retroreflector, a two-beam microwave radiometer, and NASA instrument operations. The Doppler Orbitography and Radioposition Integrated by Satellite system, the dual frequency Poseidon altimeter, the KaRIn radio-frequency subsystem, the satellite platform, and ground operations were provided by CNES.

These advanced technology and specialized radar helps SWOT to map the height of the ocean surface. In this case, SWOT’s measurement of the tsunami wave’s height and shape in open water showed that the leading edge of the wave was about 1.5 feet (45 centimeters) high. It also captured the wave’s profile and direction as it traveled toward coastal areas. Such detailed measurements of a tsunami at sea are unprecedented.

Better disaster forecast

The NOAA Center for Tsunami Research tested its forecast models using the new satellite data and found that including SWOT’s measurements could significantly improve forecast accuracy. NASA oceanographer Ben Hamlington noted that even a 1.5-foot tsunami in the deep ocean can amplify into a 30-foot wave at the shore and it is important to detect it early. Vasily Titov, chief scientist at NOAA’s Center for Tsunami Research, added that these observations suggest SWOT could significantly enhance operational tsunami forecasting – a capability long sought since the 2004 Sumatra disaster.

For the latest tech news and reviews, follow Gadgets 360 on X, Facebook, WhatsApp, Threads and Google News. For the latest videos on gadgets and tech, subscribe to our YouTube channel. If you want to know everything about top influencers, follow our in-house Who’sThat360 on Instagram and YouTube.


SpaceX to Fly Italian Science Experiments to Mars on Starship in 2026



Asus Vivobook S16 Refreshed in India With Snapdragon X Series Processor: Price, Specifications

Related Stories

Continue Reading

Science

Aeneas AI Model Helps Decode and Restore Ancient Roman Inscriptions

Published

on

By

Aeneas AI Model Helps Decode and Restore Ancient Roman Inscriptions

Ancient Roman Inscriptions help us understand laws, traditions, economy, and even the emotional perspective of ancient people. Their lives and histories, however, have been rendered difficult to understand because, over time, the inscriptions have been damaged. Every year, there are 1500 Roman inscriptions discovered, albeit many of them are incomplete. Fortunately, advancements in technology like the new Aeneas tool, is helping in the future understanding of the Roman inscriptions. It serves as a large language model specializing in reading, interpreting, and giving context to Roman inscriptions.

Decode Ancient Roman Inscriptions

As Per Report,Drawing its name from a hero in Roman history, Aeneas, the model has been trained on nearly 200,000 latian inscriptions, which span from the 7th century to the 8th century covering regions from Portugal to Iraq.Aneas has the capability to analyze images of damaged inscriptions and predict or even fill in missing letters or words. In addition to that, it is able to determine a time frame and location for the inscription, as well as cross-reference it with other inscriptions containing similar phrases or purposes.

Making History Clearer Through Technology

Since Aeneas is trained exclusively on Latin inscriptions, specialists believe that he is less prone to random or false errors when compared to general AI approaches. University of Sydney historian Anne Rogerson remarked that Aeneas’s proposals, as informed guesses, still involve real historical data as opposed to baseless conjectures.

Despite the model’s open availability,Made public alongside the model’s code and data, Aeneas’s creator, Google DeepMind, offered the model without restrictions.

Most impressively, Aeneas can be accessed for free, enabling students and researchers to shift through and reinterpret previously concealed fragments of Roman history to understand them on a deeper level.

For the latest tech news and reviews, follow Gadgets 360 on X, Facebook, WhatsApp, Threads and Google News. For the latest videos on gadgets and tech, subscribe to our YouTube channel. If you want to know everything about top influencers, follow our in-house Who’sThat360 on Instagram and YouTube.


Robot Drummer: Humanoid Robot Learns to Play Drums with Human-Like Precision

Continue Reading

Trending