A Japanese team found ammonium, nitriles and sodium nitrate clustered around the salt veins in Hayabusa2's Ryugu grains, which reframes the 75-fold gap between Bennu's water-extractable ammonia and Ryugu's.
JAXA has set MMX for launch at 4:41:03 a.m. on October 20, 2026. The probe lands on Phobos, collects at least 10 grams and returns in fiscal 2031, chasing a first from the Martian system.
Kyoto and Hiroshima University researchers found that grains Hayabusa2 brought back from asteroid Ryugu begin altering within weeks on Earth. Here is how the decay starts with an iron sulfide, what it means for Bennu and Phobos samples, and how Japan is reacting.
University of Arizona researchers plan to use samples from asteroid Bennu, returned by NASA's OSIRIS-REx, to test the idea that consciousness existed before life. It is a minority view that mainstream science does not support. Here is what the hypothesis says, where panpsychism and astrobiology meet, and the criticism it faces.