Science has made great progress in telling the story of how Earth was formed more than 4.5 billion years ago.

Volcanic eruptions, earthquakes, and plate tectonics shape the landscape,

but the origins of life on our planet remains one of the great mysteries of science.

Now, a mission by NASA to collect a piece of an ancient asteroid and bring it back to Earth

has revealed that the building

blocks of life may have been scattered throughout the solar system billions of years ago.

50 miles an hour, you can see it glowing brightly in the sky.

Tensions were high at NASA on September 24, 2023, as this capsule cradling the agency's first ever asteroid sample hurtled toward

Earth, the culmination of a seven-year journey. Wow. And after an exhilarating streak across

Earth's atmosphere, we have parachute deployment. You can see just a sigh of relief from the team.

I can hear some applause here. While rocks known as meteorites land on Earth quite often, this sample was collected after

touching down on the surface of an asteroid streaking through space.

It was carefully sealed by NASA's spacecraft to protect it from the Earth's atmosphere

and then sent home.

Michelle Thompson is an associate professor of Earth, atmospheric, and planetary

sciences at Purdue University. Asteroids are really like relics from the early solar system. If you

think about Earth, the surface is changing all the time. We have volcanoes, we have earthquakes,

but asteroids have not been significantly altered since they were formed 4.5 billion years ago.

You ready to see the results of the mission?

Preliminary analyses of the asteroid showed it contained water, carbon, nitrogen, and other organic matter.

But the space rock held even more secrets.

Last week, scientists revealed the sample also included amino acids,

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