Salty, water-soaked asteroid reveals pathway to life’s origins

// custom header art window.tgam.meta.photo_desktop = ""; window.tgam.meta.photo_mobile = ""; window.tgam.meta.video = "https://www.theglobeandmail.com/files/editorial/News/new-asteroid/bennu.mp4"; window.tgam.meta.caption = "This series of images taken by the OSIRIS-REx spacecraft shows Bennu in one full rotation from a distance of around 50 miles (80 km). The spacecraft’s PolyCam camera obtained the thirty-six 2.2-millisecond frames over a period of four hours and 18 minutes."; window.tgam.meta.credit = "NASA/Goddard/University of Arizona"; // custom header layout parameters window.tgam.meta.headline_overlay = false; window.tgam.meta.headline_overlay_vertical_position = "centre"; // top, centre, bottom window.tgam.meta.headline_overlay_horizontal_position = "centre"; // left, centre, right window.tgam.meta.headline_overlay_gradient = false; window.tgam.meta.two_column = true; window.tgam.meta.swap_column = false; window.tgam.meta.full_width = false; window.tgam.meta.dark_background = true; window.tgam.meta.dark_background_colour = "#000000"; window.tgam.meta.centre_headline = false; window.tgam.meta.large_headline = false; window.tgam.meta.sans_headline = false; window.tgam.meta.label_text_colour = ""; window.tgam.meta.label_box_colour = ""; window.tgam.meta.label_text_colour_overlay = "" ; window.tgam.meta.label_box_colour_overlay = ""; window.tgam.meta.audio_bar = false; // custom header display overrides (optional): window.tgam.meta.display_head = "Salty, water-soaked asteroid reveals pathway to life’s origins"; window.tgam.meta.display_deck = "Researchers offer their most comprehensive assessment to date of the history of water and organic compounds in a sample obtained from a small asteroid called Bennu"; window.tgam.meta.label = "Science"; window.tgam.meta.byline = "Ivan Semeniuk"; window.tgam.meta.byline2 = ""; window.tgam.meta.creditline = "The Globe and Mail"; Cold, dark and dry.For Kim Tait, those three words have long defined conditions for asteroids in our solar system – the minor celestial bodies that are the refuse from planetary formation processes long passed.