As part of a large-scale effort to unlock clues about the origins of life on Earth, Brown researchers are analyzing rare samples from the asteroid Bennu, hoping to reveal its ancient secrets. The work is happening at the NASA-funded Reflectance Experiment Laboratory (RELAB), which is housed on campus and led by Brown planetary scientist Ralph Milliken. 

“These samples are the best examples we have today of some of the most primitive material in our solar system,” says Milliken, pictured above, an associate professor of Earth, environmental and planetary sciences who directs the NASA Rhode Island Space Grant Consortium. “It’s really amazing and humbling to know our group is one of a handful of specialized spectroscopy labs who are working with this material that has been in space for the last four and a half billion years.”

The researchers at RELAB are among approximately 200 scientists around the world to have received samples—they look like ground-up charcoal—from Bennu to date. The analysis is part of NASA’s OSIRIS-REx mission, which launched in 2016 and returned in 2023, the first U.S. mission to collect a sample from an asteroid and deliver it to Earth. 

“Understanding these kinds of asteroids will provide really powerful insights into fundamental questions of where the water on Earth might have come from, what sorts of organic compounds may have been delivered here and what kinds of minerals are associated with those components,” Milliken says. “It will also add to our knowledge of the variety of material that formed in the earliest days of our solar system and that are still out there floating about, continuing to be delivered to rocky and icy planets and moons. This is an important piece of the puzzle in understanding how we might go from the raw ingredients necessary for life to somehow ending up with the great diversity and complexity of life that we have today on our planet.”