Scientists from NASA and other institutions who have been analyzing the Bennu asteroid sample that returned to Earth last September found molecules, including amino acids, which are essential ingredients of life as we know it.

Scientists have detected organic compounds and minerals necessary for life in the samples collected by the OSIRIS-REx mission from a near-Earth asteroid named Bennu.

There’s certainly nothing living on the asteroid Bennu, an airless, 1,614-ft. rubble pile orbiting the sun about 40.2 million miles from Earth. But that doesn’t mean that Bennu hasn’t all at once become one of the most biologically interesting objects in the solar system.