Two science teams pored over samples from the B-type asteroid Bennu, finding chemicals linked to the beginnings of life and brine that is of interest for future space exploration.

Samples contain all five nucleobases of DNA and RNA, supporting theory that asteroids may have seeded Earth with life's essential ingredients.

Asteroid Bennu seems to have come from a long-lost world on the fringes of the solar system, where saltwater pooled and dried over thousands of years and life’s basic ingredients were widespread.

Studies of asteroid Bennu delivered to Earth by NASA’s OSIRIS-REx spacecraft have revealed molecules that, on our planet, are key to life.

Rock and dust samples brought back from the near-Earth asteroid Bennu contain organic matter, including amino acids and all five DNA and RNA bases, as well as salts that formed early in the history of Bennu's parent body.

Analyzing a sample from an asteroid named Bennu reveals the chemicals necessary to form DNA and RNA.

Scientists detected all five nucleobases -- building blocks of DNA and RNA -- in samples returned from asteroid Bennu by NASA's OSIRIS-REx mission.

Joint Press Release by Hokkaido University, Japan Agency for Marine-Earth Science and Technology (JAMSTEC), Kyushu University, Tohoku University, and

Discover the fascinating findings from asteroid Bennu: pristine salt minerals reveal the presence of liquid water in the early solar system.

Bennu’s parent asteroid, which formed around 4.5 billion years ago, seems to have been home to pockets of liquid water.

The building blocks for organic matter have been discovered on the asteroid Bennu, as deatiled in a new study in the journal Nature Astronomy. The research gives new insight into how life originated on Earth and where we might find it elsewhere in the universe.