NASA scientists discovered a plethora of precursors to life on the asteroid Bennu, demonstrating the importance of Earthbound sample-return missions.

Rock and dust samples retrieved by NASA from the asteroid Bennu exhibit some of the chemical building blocks of life, according to research that provides some of the best evidence to date that such space rocks may have seeded early Earth with the raw ingredients that fostered the emergence of living organisms.

There are 20 amino acids that create the proteins required for life on our planet — and scientists have now found exactly 14 of them on an asteroid millions of miles away. The asteroid in question, named Bennu, was the focus of a very dreamy NASA mission called OSIRIS-REx that launched in 2016.

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

Study indicates that Bennu’s parent asteroid developed or accumulated material from a reservoir in the outer solar system where ammonia ice is stable

"The detection of these key building blocks of life in the Bennu samples supports the theory that asteroids and their fragments seeded the early Earth with the raw ingredients that led to the emergence of life," said astrobiologist Dr Danny Glavin of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland, lead author of one of the studies.

NASA's OSIRIS-REx mission collected samples from asteroid Bennu. Scientists have found amino acids, ammonia and other molecules essential to life on Earth.