Asteroid sampled by NASA may once have been part of an ocean world

An asteroid sample brought back to Earth may have once been part of a small, ocean-covered world with conditions favourable for life to emerge. That’s according to the team behind NASA’s OSIRIS-REx mission, which brought back a sample of the asteroid Bennu in September 2023.

“My working hypothesis is that this was an ancient ocean world,” says Dante Lauretta at the University…