Comet Enthusiast

A week after announcing the discovery of arsenic-loving life-forms, NASA astronomers have uncovered ET amino acids—the precursors of proteins—in fragments of previously superheated meteorites that landed in northern Sudan from a 13-foot-wide (4-meter-wide) parent asteroid that entered an Earth-crossing orbit.

A collision about 15 million years ago sent the 59-ton asteroid closer to Earth—and provided scientists the first opportunity to observe a celestial object before it entered our atmosphere in October 2008. During desert expeditions, scientists later recovered nearly 600 meteorite fragments from the meteor shower.