Scientists have detected organic compounds and minerals necessary for life in the samples collected by the OSIRIS-REx mission from a near-Earth asteroid named Bennu.

Rock and dust samples retrieved by NASA from the asteroid Bennu exhibit some of the chemical building blocks of life, according to research that provides some of the best evidence to date that such space rocks may have seeded early Earth with the raw ingredients that fostered the emergence of living organisms.

Rock and dust samples from the Bennu asteroid contain molecules that are the "key to life" on Earth, NASA officials announced on Wednesday.

In a triumph for NASA’s first asteroid sample return mission, new findings suggest that tiny bits of rock retrieved from the asteroid Bennu hold lingering traces of ancient salt water. The discovery hints that life-friendly chemistry could be far more common in space than astronomers previously thought.

In samples NASA brought back from the asteroid Bennu, scientists have discovered of organic compounds, including key building blocks of life like amino acids.