From The NASA Goddard Space Flight Center
1.10.23
By Lonnie Shekhtman
lonnie.shekhtman@nasa.gov
NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md.
Amino acids make up millions of proteins that drive the chemical gears of life, including essential bodily functions in animals. Because of amino acids’ relationship to living things scientists are eager to understand the origins of these molecules. After all, amino acids may have helped spawn life on Earth after being delivered here about 4 billion years ago by pieces of asteroids or comets.
But if so, were amino acids produced inside asteroids or comets? Or did life’s raw ingredients come intact from the interstellar molecular cloud of ice, gas, and dust that formed our solar system and countless others?
If amino acids formed in our solar system, then life could be unique here. But if they came from an interstellar cloud, these precursors to life could have spread to other solar systems, as well.
Scientists at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, sought to explore how amino acids and amines – their chemical cousins – may have formed by simulating a mini, cosmic evolution in the lab. The researchers made ices like those found in interstellar clouds, blasted them with radiation, and then exposed the leftover material, which included amines and amino acids, to water and heat to replicate the conditions they would have experienced inside asteroids.
“The important take-away is that the building blocks of life have a strong link not only to processes in the asteroid, but also to those of the parent interstellar cloud,” said Danna Qasim, who worked on this experiment while she was a postdoctoral fellow at NASA Goddard from 2020 to 2022. Qasim now is a research scientist at the Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio and lead author of a study published on January 9 in the journal ACS Earth and Space Chemistry [below].
These towering tendrils of cosmic dust and gas sit at the heart of M16, or the Eagle Nebula. The aptly named Pillars of Creation featured in this stunning image are part of an active star-forming region in the nebula and hide newborn stars in their wispy columns. The chemical building blocks of life may have come from regions like this one and then were further processed inside asteroids formed in our, and possibly other, solar systems. This image was made by combining images from two cameras aboard NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope. Webb’s near-infrared image was fused with its mid-infrared image, setting this star-forming region ablaze with new details.
Credits: SCIENCE: NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI. IMAGE PROCESSING: Joseph DePasquale (STScI), Alyssa Pagan (STScI), Anton M. Koekemoer (STScI).
For their study, Qasim and her colleagues made ices out of molecules that telescopes have commonly detected in interstellar clouds, such as water, methanol, carbon dioxide and ammonia. Then, using a Van de Graaff particle accelerator at Goddard, they zapped the ices with high-energy protons to mimic the cosmic radiation the ices would have experienced in a molecular cloud. The radiation process broke apart simple molecules. Those molecules recombined into more complex amines and amino acids, such as ethylamine and glycine. The amino acids were left in gooey residues.
“We expect that these residues from the interstellar cloud are transferred to the protoplanetary disk that creates a solar system, including asteroids,” Qasim said.
Asteroid simulations came next. By submerging the residues in tubes of water and heating them to different temperatures and for varying durations, scientists replicated the conditions inside some asteroids billions of years ago, called “aqueous alteration.” Afterward, they analyzed the effects these warm, watery conditions had on the molecules.
They found that the types of amines and amino acids created in laboratory interstellar ices, and their proportions, stayed constant regardless of asteroid conditions. This implies that amines and amino acids can stay intact as they migrate from the interstellar cloud to an asteroid. But each molecule reacted differently to asteroid-like conditions depending on how much heat the researchers applied and for how long. Glycine levels doubled after 7 days of asteroid simulations, for example, while ethylamine levels barely budged.
Many other scientists have created interstellar ices and plied them with radiation. Like the Goddard team, they’ve also found that this process creates amines and amino acids. But the set of compounds produced in labs doesn’t match the set detected in meteorites. Meteorites are pieces of asteroids and, perhaps, comets that scientists can find on Earth’s surface and probe in the lab.
Qasim and her colleagues wanted to investigating this discrepancy, so they designed an experiment — the first one to add asteroid simulations to the ice experiment. The process began with an idea by Christopher Materese, a Goddard research scientist who was principal investigator of this project. Materese wondered whether asteroid conditions were the missing link between lab-made interstellar ice and meteorite compositions.
“Laboratory experiments focused solely on ice irradiation are not fully capturing the reality of the chemistry experienced by these compounds,” Materese said. “So part of the goal of this work was to see if we can close that gap.”
The research team has not yet closed the gap. They found that even after simulating asteroid conditions, the amines and amino acids they produced still didn’t match those in meteorites.
This could be happening for a variety of reasons. One has to do with possible contamination. Because meteorites fall through Earth’s atmosphere and spend some time on the surface before they’re scooped up, it’s possible that their chemical makeup changes and doesn’t perfectly reflect the asteroids they came from. But scientists will be able to address this issue with pristine samples of asteroid Bennu, currently being ferried by NASA’s OSIRIS-REx spacecraft to Earth for a Sept. 24, 2023, delivery to the surface. Scientists also will improve their ice experiments after NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope returns detailed information about the types of ices that make up interstellar molecular clouds.
“We are not nearly at the end of this work yet, we still have more to do,” Materese said.
Science paper:
ACS Earth and Space Chemistry
See the full article here.
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NASA/Goddard Campus
NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, MD is home to the nation’s largest organization of combined scientists, engineers and technologists that build spacecraft, instruments and new technology to study the Earth, the sun, our solar system, and the universe.
Named for American rocketry pioneer Dr. Robert H. Goddard, the center was established in 1959 as NASA’s first space flight complex. Goddard and its several facilities are critical in carrying out NASA’s missions of space exploration and scientific discovery.
GSFC also operates two spaceflight tracking and data acquisition networks (the NASA Deep Space Network and the Near Earth Network); develops and maintains advanced space and Earth science data information systems, and develops satellite systems for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
GSFC manages operations for many NASA and international missions including the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope; the Explorers Program; the Discovery Program; the Earth Observing System; INTEGRAL; MAVEN; OSIRIS-REx; the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory ; the Solar Dynamics Observatory; Tracking and Data Relay Satellite System ; Fermi; and Swift. Past missions managed by GSFC include the Rossi X-ray Timing Explorer (RXTE), Compton Gamma Ray Observatory, SMM, COBE, IUE, and ROSAT. Typically, unmanned Earth observation missions and observatories in Earth orbit are managed by GSFC, while unmanned planetary missions are managed by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, California.
Goddard is one of four centers built by NASA since its founding on July 29, 1958. It is NASA’s first, and oldest, space center. Its original charter was to perform five major functions on behalf of NASA: technology development and fabrication; planning; scientific research; technical operations; and project management. The center is organized into several directorates, each charged with one of these key functions.
Until May 1, 1959, NASA’s presence in Greenbelt, MD was known as the Beltsville Space Center. It was then renamed the Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC), after Robert H. Goddard. Its first 157 employees transferred from the United States Navy’s Project Vanguard missile program, but continued their work at the Naval Research Laboratory in Washington, D.C., while the center was under construction.
Goddard Space Flight Center contributed to Project Mercury, America’s first manned space flight program. The Center assumed a lead role for the project in its early days and managed the first 250 employees involved in the effort, who were stationed at Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia. However, the size and scope of Project Mercury soon prompted NASA to build a new Manned Spacecraft Center, now the Johnson Space Center, in Houston, Texas. Project Mercury’s personnel and activities were transferred there in 1961.
The Goddard network tracked many early manned and unmanned spacecraft.
Goddard Space Flight Center remained involved in the manned space flight program, providing computer support and radar tracking of flights through a worldwide network of ground stations called the Spacecraft Tracking and Data Acquisition Network (STDN). However, the Center focused primarily on designing unmanned satellites and spacecraft for scientific research missions. Goddard pioneered several fields of spacecraft development, including modular spacecraft design, which reduced costs and made it possible to repair satellites in orbit. Goddard’s Solar Max satellite, launched in 1980, was repaired by astronauts on the Space Shuttle Challenger in 1984. The Hubble Space Telescope, launched in 1990, remains in service and continues to grow in capability thanks to its modular design and multiple servicing missions by the Space Shuttle.
Today, the center remains involved in each of NASA’s key programs. Goddard has developed more instruments for planetary exploration than any other organization, among them scientific instruments sent to every planet in the Solar System. The center’s contribution to the Earth Science Enterprise includes several spacecraft in the Earth Observing System fleet as well as EOSDIS, a science data collection, processing, and distribution system. For the manned space flight program, Goddard develops tools for use by astronauts during extra-vehicular activity, and operates the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, a spacecraft designed to study the Moon in preparation for future manned exploration.
The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) is the agency of the United States government that is responsible for the nation’s civilian space program and for aeronautics and aerospace research.
President Dwight D. Eisenhower established the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) in 1958 with a distinctly civilian (rather than military) orientation encouraging peaceful applications in space science. The National Aeronautics and Space Act was passed on July 29, 1958, disestablishing NASA’s predecessor, the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA). The new agency became operational on October 1, 1958.
Since that time, most U.S. space exploration efforts have been led by NASA, including the Apollo moon-landing missions, the Skylab space station, and later the Space Shuttle. Currently, NASA is supporting the International Space Station and is overseeing the development of the Orion Multi-Purpose Crew Vehicle and Commercial Crew vehicles. The agency is also responsible for the Launch Services Program (LSP) which provides oversight of launch operations and countdown management for unmanned NASA launches. Most recently, NASA announced a new Space Launch System that it said would take the agency’s astronauts farther into space than ever before and lay the cornerstone for future human space exploration efforts by the U.S.
NASA science is focused on better understanding Earth through the Earth Observing System, advancing heliophysics through the efforts of the Science Mission Directorate’s Heliophysics Research Program, exploring bodies throughout the Solar System with advanced robotic missions such as New Horizons, and researching astrophysics topics, such as the Big Bang, through the Great Observatories [Hubble, Chandra, Spitzer, and associated programs.] NASA shares data with various national and international organizations such as from the [JAXA]Greenhouse Gases Observing Satellite.
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