Asteroid sample could reveal more about the solar system's origins

After seven years of space flight and billions of miles traveled, the first asteroid sample landed safely on Earth on Sunday.

NASA's OSIRIS-REx mission capsule contains an 8.8-ounce asteroid sample that could help scientists worldwide learn more about the solar system's origins.

Dani Mendoza DellaGiustina, the deputy principal investigator for the OSIRIS-REx mission, says the asteroid Bennu, where NASA collected the sample, is really special in that it is chock-full of water-bearing minerals and organic molecules.

“We know that these represent some of the precursors to life,” she says. “So we think that asteroid Bennu is perhaps representative of some of the objects that brought the prebiotic ingredients that we needed to the early Earth. And we hope that by studying the sample, we're going to get one step closer to answering the question: How did life originate on our own planet?”

The sample will be analyzed in some of the most high-end facilities in the world in the next two years, DellaGiustina says.