![\"Pic:](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/skynews-nasa-asteroid-dust_6997458.jpg\")
<\/p>\nDust scooped up from an asteroid by a NASA spacecraft 200 million miles from Earth has been found to contain material that is older than our sun.<\/p>\n
The first major study of the chemistry of the asteroid Bennu identified “presolar grains” – stardust that condensed around dying stars billions of years ago.<\/p>\n
An international team of scientists, including some from London’s Natural History Museum, say the samples are a snapshot of the early Solar System, more pristine than any meteorite on Earth.<\/p>\n
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Image:
\n Pic: Trustees of the Natural History Museum<\/p>\n
In one of NASA<\/strong><\/a>‘s most audacious missions the spacecraft Osiris Rex briefly touched the surface of Bennu, using a robotic arm to collect around 120g of material which was packed into a capsule and returned to Earth in 2023.<\/p>\n Chemical analysis has now allowed scientists to piece together Bennu’s origins in the cold, dense gas and dust of the early Solar System.<\/p>\n Image: Professor Jessica Barnes, from the University of Arizona, who is one of the study’s authors, said: “Our data suggest that Bennu’s parent asteroid formed in the outer parts of the solar system, possibly beyond the orbit of Saturn.”<\/p>\n But the analysis also found a smorgasbord of other material in the sample, including organic matter from the outer Solar System and the interstellar medium – the gas and dust between stars – as well as high temperature materials that are thought to have formed close to the sun before drifting outwards.<\/p>\n Read more from Sky News: Image: Image: Professor Sara Russell, planetary scientist at the Natural History Museum and another of the study’s authors, said: “We’re looking at a unique snapshot of the outer Solar System at [the time of] the birth of our sun.<\/p>\n “Some of these grains have survived billions of years of Solar System evolution almost untouched and can tell us more about the environment in which planets were born.”<\/p>\n Further research conducted at the Natural History Museum has found evidence in the samples of water-driven chemical reactions that began over 4.5 billion years ago, before Earth had fully formed.<\/p>\n![\"Bennu](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/skynews-bennu-osiris-rex-asteroid_6997447.jpg\")
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\n Bennu seen from the Osiris-Rex.
\nPic: NASA\/AP<\/p>\n
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\n Pic: Trustees of the Natural History Museum<\/p>\n![\"Osiris-Rex](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/skynews-osiris-rex-bennu-sa_6997443.jpg\")
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\n Osiris-Rex spacecraft touches the surface of asteroid Bennu in 2020. Pic: NASA\/AP<\/p>\n