TUCSON, Ariz. (KGUN) — It’s been a real point of pride that the University of Arizona led a mission to grab a sample of an asteroid and bring it to Earth. Now those samples are teaching us more about the early days of our solar system, and maybe more about how life began.

It’s been not quite two years since U of A’s Osiris Rex spacecraft brought back a sample from the asteroid Bennu. Scientists jumped on those samples right away and in that time they found some interesting surprises in that gift from space.

It is not a stretch to call the capsule that delivered samples from Bennu a time capsule.

UA Association Professor Jessica Barnes says, “They're giving us a glimpse, not only as to what happened in the last few 100 million years of the asteroid's history, but all the way back to the very beginning of our solar system, about 4.6 billion years ago.”