British scientists praise the beauty of an asteroid that has just been returned from space.
"It's really beautiful, really beautiful," said Dr. Ashley King, quoted from the BBC website.
The material was retrieved by a US space agency (NASA) mission and returned to Earth 17 days ago, currently being examined at a specialized laboratory in Texas.
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"We have confirmed that we are heading to the right asteroid," Dr. King told BBC News.
Three days of analysis by Natural History Museum (NHM) experts and five others on the "Quick Look" team showed the space black powder was rich in carbon and water-rich minerals.
That's a good sign. There is a theory that asteroid rocks are carbon-rich (organic) water-rich. This could be how we get water in the oceans and some compounds needed to start life.
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Bennu asteroid samples will be used to test these ideas.
"We're trying to figure out who we are and where we came from. What does this vast universe look like?" said NASA Administrator Bill Nelson during a briefing at the Johnson Space Center, where the dedicated laboratory is located.
While it is clear that the mission has returned a "plentiful sample", scientists are still not sure exactly how much Bennu they actually have.
