NAI-funded astrobiologists at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center have successfully completed a proof-of-concept study of a new technique to analyze extremely small samples of material such as from asteroids, comets, and IDPs for the presence of biomolecules such as amino acids, components used to make DNA, and other biologically important molecules like nitrogen heterocycles, sugar-related organic compounds, and compounds found in modern metabolism.

Read the full article here.

Ultimately, the techniques they have pioneered will allow investigation of other small-scale extraterrestrial materials such as micrometeorites, interplanetary dust particles, and cometary particles in future studies. Goddard’s Mike Callahan is lead author of a paper on this research available online in the Journal of Chromatography A.