Scientists find nitrogen near salt in asteroid sand

Scientists in Japan have found chemicals with nitrogen^*1 in sand from the asteroid^*2 Ryugu. The chemicals were gathered around small crystals^*3 of salt. The scientists think this salt formed from very salty water inside a bigger body long ago. That salty water may have been a good place for making the materials of life. The study was published in the science journal^*4 Nature Astronomy on August 27, 2026.

The sand came from the Japanese spacecraft^*5 Hayabusa2. It collected sand from the surface of Ryugu. A capsule^*6 with the sand came back to Earth at the end of 2020. Researchers around the world are still studying the sand today.

Ryugu is made of pieces of a bigger body. That body was born about 4.5 billion^*7 years ago, and water flowed inside it. Most of the sand from Ryugu is clay^*8. This clay was made when rock and water reacted^*9 with each other. Some grains also have thin lines of salt, such as sodium carbonate^*10 and rock salt^*11. These salt lines are rare. Scientists found them with an electron microscope^*12.

The research group was led by Yoko Kebukawa and Toru Matsumoto. Kebukawa works at Science Tokyo, a university in Tokyo. Tokyo is the capital of Japan. Matsumoto works at Kyoto University. Researchers from the Institute for Molecular Science, Hiroshima University, Ehime University, JASRI and the National Institute for Materials Science also took part. So did researchers from JAXA, Japan's space agency.

The group studied the sand with infrared light^*13 and X-rays^*14. The infrared light showed that there was ammonia^*15 in the sand. Then the researchers cut out thin pieces of sand from around the salt crystals. They looked at these pieces with X-rays at two large research centers. One was UVSOR at the Institute for Molecular Science in Okazaki, a city in Aichi, Japan. The other was SPring-8 in Hyogo, Japan.

Around the salt, the scientists found three kinds of chemicals with nitrogen. One was a salt with nitrogen in it, called sodium nitrate^*16. Another was ammonia. The X-rays showed ammonia in the clay next to the sodium carbonate. The scientists think it sits between the thin layers of the clay. The third was organic matter^*17 with carbon^*18 and nitrogen joined strongly together. The researchers also looked at a different piece of sand with no salt in it. That piece showed no clear sign of nitrogen. This shows that the ammonia was gathered near the salt crystals.

The researchers have an idea about why the nitrogen was near the salt. Inside the bigger body, water was slowly lost because it froze or dried up. The water that was left became very salty. Salt crystals formed from this salty water. Chemicals with nitrogen also became very concentrated^*19 in it. Scientists have already found amino acids^*20 and nucleobases^*21 in the sand from Ryugu. These are materials that living things are made of. The last salty water may have been a good place for making materials like these.

The scientists also think the bigger body probably formed far from the sun, farther away than Jupiter. That area had a lot of ice, and the body took in a large amount of it. Today Ryugu travels around the sun between Earth and Mars. That is much closer to the sun.

The dwarf planet^*22 Ceres may have a similar place. Scientists think Ceres has salty water under its ground. Clay with ammonia has been found on Ceres. Sodium carbonate has been found there too. So Ceres may have salty water like the water that was once inside Ryugu's bigger body.

1. *1 nitrogen: a gas; most of the air around us is nitrogen
2. *2 asteroid: a big rock that travels around the sun in space
3. *3 crystals: small hard pieces with flat sides, like the pieces of salt or sugar
4. *4 journal: a magazine where scientists print their studies
5. *5 spacecraft: a machine that travels in space
6. *6 capsule: a small closed container that can come back to Earth from space
7. *7 billion: a thousand million
8. *8 clay: soft, fine earth; it is used to make pots
9. *9 reacted: changed into something new when they mixed together
10. *10 sodium carbonate: a white salt; it is not the salt we eat
11. *11 rock salt: the same salt that we put on food
12. *12 electron microscope: a tool that makes very tiny things look big
13. *13 infrared light: a kind of light that our eyes cannot see
14. *14 X-rays: a kind of light that our eyes cannot see; doctors use it to look inside the body
15. *15 ammonia: a gas with a strong smell; it has nitrogen in it
16. *16 sodium nitrate: a kind of salt that has nitrogen in it
17. *17 organic matter: matter made mostly of carbon, like the things in living bodies
18. *18 carbon: a black material; coal and pencil lead are made of it
19. *19 concentrated: gathered together in a small space in large amounts
20. *20 amino acids: small chemicals that living bodies use to make themselves
21. *21 nucleobases: small chemicals that are part of DNA, the plan inside living things
22. *22 dwarf planet: a round object in space that is smaller than a planet