ALI ROGIN: Science has made great progress in telling the story of how Earth was formed more than four and a half 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 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.

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

ALI ROGIN (voice-over): 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.

MAN: 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.

ALI ROGIN (voice-over): 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.

MICHELLE THOMPSON, Purdue University: MICHELLE THOMPSON, 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 four and a half billion years ago.

MAN: You ready to see the results of the mission?

ALI ROGIN (voice-over): 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, considered the building blocks of life and other components found in DNA.

This discovery has given momentum to a theory in the scientific community that not only can an asteroid destroy life as it did with the dinosaurs, but it can also spread it.

Tim McCoy of the Smithsonian Institution is one of the lead authors who studied the sample.

TIM MCCOY, Smithsonian Institution: We've thought for a while that the water on Earth certainly could have come from an asteroid because we've seen water for a long time.

This is telling us that not just the water, but some of the building blocks of life actually were seeded onto Earth and other planets.

It wouldn't have been limited to just Earth.

ALI ROGIN (voice-over): The Osiris Rex spacecraft, now called Osiris Apex, which collected this extraordinary sample, is now aiming at a new target.

It's on a path to rendezvous with the Apophis asteroid when it whizzes by the Earth in 2029.