When NASA launched a spacecraft to an asteroid, scientists patiently waited for their chance to look at bits of the space rock in a laboratory, hoping it would answer some of humanity's most enduring questions.

Rock and dust samples from the Bennu asteroid contain molecules that are the "key to life" on Earth, NASA officials announced on Wednesday.

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.