Asteroid samples fetched by NASA hold not only the pristine building blocks for life but also the salty remains of an ancient water world, scientists reported Wednesday. The 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

NASA's Osiris-Rex spacecraft returned the samples from Bennu, a near-Earth asteroid, in 2023. It's the biggest cosmic haul from beyond the moon.

The first goal of OSIRIS-REx was to blast a spacecraft toward the grayish, lumpy object and get it really close to the surface so the probe could pluck up some space rock samples