Tootfinder

Earth-Like Planets Are More Common Than We Thought, Study Says https://www.404media.co/earth-like-planets-are-more-common-than-we-thought-study-says/

“All five nucleobases used to construct both DNA and RNA,
along with phosphates,
have already been found in the Bennu samples
brought to Earth by OSIRIS-REx,”
said Yoshihiro Furukawa.
“The new discovery of ribose means that all of the components to form the molecule RNA are present in Bennu.”
…

Sugars, ‘Gum,’ Stardust Found in NASA's Asteroid Bennu Samples - NASA
The asteroid Bennu continues to provide new clues to scientists’ biggest questions about the formation of the early solar system and the origins of life. As

Interesting corollary to the #Perseverance discovery in the Bright Angel formation on #Mars making headlines 1 1/2 months ago: at a public talk in Bochum as part of a mathematics outreach event - #Life Detection scale #MarsSampleReturnMission the rating could jump up to 5 or 6 after lab analysis.
Green also remarked that the sample tubes dropped by Percy are up for grabs for *any* spacefaring nation capable of doing a MSRM - including China though they don't plan to go after the Percy samples with their upcoming #Tianwen3 mission (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tianwen-3) as far as he has heard. And regardless of where they'll get their own samples they could advance the case for life, perhaps even extant, on Mars a lot - which Green feels has been all but made in the past decades of Mars research anyway. Oh, and he also thinks terraforming Mars is quite viable ...