They’re the building rocks of life. Analysis of debris from the nearly 5 billion-year-old asteroid Bennu suggests the ingredients to life on Earth were present in the early days of our solar system, as detailed in a series of papers published in the journal Nature Astronomy.

When asteroids like Bennu hit the young Earth, they could have provided a complete package of complex molecules and the ingredients essential to life, such as water, phosphate and ammonia. Together, these components could have seeded Earth’s initially barren landscape to produce a habitable world.

Samples of Bennu were brought back to Earth by NASA’s OSIRIS-REx spacecraft in 2023. Now, a pair of newly published papers reveal that the samples contain precursors to life that formed in a watery environment—a watery environment very similar to the one that prevailed on Earth before life emerged up to four billion years ago.

A NASA spacecraft has returned asteroid samples that hold not only the pristine building blocks for life but also the salty remains of an ancient water world

NASA scientists found amino acids, key minerals, and nucleobases for DNA in samples from the OSIRIS-REx asteroid mission. It's a win for alien life.

Bennu contains minerals and thousands of organic molecules, including the chemical components that make up DNA.