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.

The OSIRIS-REx spacecraft returned triumphantly to Earth in 2023 after collecting 4.3 ounces (121.6 grams) of precious grains of dust and rock from the asteroid Bennu in 2020. While that sample return was an incredible feat of engineering,

Material retrieved from the asteroid Bennu by NASA’s OSIRIS-REx spacecraft shows that all the basic building blocks of life were astonishingly widespread in the early solar system