NASA's findings provide the strongest evidence yet that asteroids may have planted the seeds of life on Earth and that these ingredients were mingling with water almost right from the start.

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

The building blocks of DNA have been found in samples returned to Earth from an asteroid, suggesting life rained down from space and could have formed elsewhere.

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

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