New Delhi, Jan. 31 -- In a major twist to the study of life beyond Earth, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) said earlier this week that samples collected from asteroid Bennu contained a "mix of life's ingredients."

In research papers published Wednesday in the journals Nature and Nature Astronomy, scientists from NASA and other institutions shared results of the first in-depth analyses of the minerals and molecules in the Bennu samples, which OSIRIS-REx delivered to Earth in 2023.

The latest discovery, unveiled by the NASA on January 29, came as a bit of a surprise and posed many exciting questions such as "Why didn't life form on Bennu?" Was it the temperature, the absence of an atmosphere, or the lack of other e...