Early analysis of asteroid samples from NASA’s OSIRIS-REx mission show the residue of an icy brine, and a soup of amino acids.

The meteor fragments returned by OSIRIS-REx shed light on the entwined history of water and the chemical ingredients of life in the solar system.

However, the 74 million tonne space rock, which was first discovered in 1999, could potentially strike Earth in around one hundred years time. NASA has calculated there is a 0.037 per cent – or one in ...

YR4, which was recently spotted in the cosmos with a non-zero chance of hitting Earth in the coming years, may have caused ...

Astronomers have revealed the potential impact area of a 'city-killer' asteroid that has a slight chance of hitting Earth on ...

When exposed to formaldehyde, which was also detected, ammonia can form amino acids, the building blocks of proteins. According to the study in Nature Astronom y, the team also found 14 of the 20 ...

The DNA ingredients discovered on the asteroid Bennu by NASA's OSIRIS-REx mission suggest that life-building blocks exist ...

Samples from asteroid Bennu have delivered insights into the origins of Earth’s water and the organic molecules that may have ...

This story incorporates reporting from Yahoo, Space on MSN.com and MSN.NASA astronaut Suni Williams set a new record with a ...

Japanese scientists detected all five nucleobases — building blocks of DNA and RNA — in samples returned from asteroid Bennu ...

Studies of asteroid Bennu delivered to Earth by NASA’s OSIRIS-REx spacecraft have revealed molecules that, on our planet, are key to life.

Asteroid Bennu seems to have come from a long-lost world on the fringes of the solar system, where saltwater pooled and dried ...