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Japan asteroid probe finds 23 amino acids, researchers confirm [nikkei.com]:

TOKYO -- A total of 23 types of amino acids were found in asteroid samples brought back by Japan's Hayabusa2 space probe, according to new studies published in the journal Science and elsewhere, shedding further light on the origins of life on Earth.

Two teams -- one including researchers at Japan's Hokkaido University and Tokyo Institute of Technology, and another including researchers at Okayama University -- published two studies dated Friday.

Researchers in Japan and abroad have been analyzing the samples since they were recovered in late 2020. After sending the samples back to Earth, Hayabusa2 has gone on a mission to another asteroid.

Amino acids are the building blocks of proteins, which are essential to life. Those collected from the asteroid Ryugu include glutamic acid, which is responsible for the taste of umami, and valine, which cannot be synthesized by the human body, the researchers found.

Whether amino acids originated on Earth or arrived from space has been a topic of much scientific debate. The findings from Hayabusa2 appear to support the latter hypothesis.

"The search for extraterrestrial life could take off on hopes that amino-acid-based organisms could exist on Mars and beyond," said Tamagawa University professor Yoshitaka Yoshimura.

The findings also could shed more light on the birth of the solar system. Some of the samples are thought to contain compounds from when they were originally formed -- around 3 million years after the solar system was created roughly 4.6 billion years ago -- essentially making them a "fossil" of the solar system.

Previous samples collected from a comet contained few compounds, while those from meteorites may have been contaminated with Earth-based materials. The samples from Ryugu are expected to serve as a better baseline for materials found in the rest of the solar system.

"If we can closely analyze materials that were created soon after the birth of the solar system, we'll have a clearer picture of what was happening back then," said Junichi Watanabe, a professor at the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan.

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