Keith’s note: Remember in the film “2010” when they found something on Europa? Well Uracil has been found on Ryugu URACIL! I am an actual (former) space biologist – this is a big deal. Oh yes – they found Niacin aka Vitamin B3 – and lots of other stuff that appeared on the pages of my organic chemistry, genetics, and biochemistry textbooks. There are NASA authors on this research paper and NASA provided funding. And its presented to the world in an open access paper in Nature. Yet there is no mention whatsoever made at NASA.gov or Astrobiology.nasa.gov or on @NASAAstroBio. Yet it is on every major news service globally. Oh yes – we have an OSIRIS-REx sample return canister coming back to Earth from asteroid Bennu – which is similar in many ways to asteroid Ryugu. I wonder what’s in there. Time for Marc Etkind and his staff at NASA PAO to wake up.
Biologist, Explorers Club Fellow, ex-NASA Space Biologist and Payload integrator, Editor of NASAWatch.com and Astrobiology.com, Lapsed climber, Explorer, Synaesthete, Former Challenger Center board member... More by Keith Cowing
Yes, this is a big deal! In the Miller/Fox sense of a big deal! Thanks for posting it, Keith, otherwise some of us never would have seen it.
Agree that I had not yet seen this. I’m also finding nothing on JAXA’s Twitter feed or on the feed for Hayabusa2 or the JAXA institute that’s studying the material that was returned. I could fully understand if NASA was holding off until the mission owners (JAXA) produce their own press releases, though JAXA and NASA must both have known about the Nature article and could have been in sync with its release.