Every six years, an asteroid by the name of Bennu passes by Earth. Bennu is a small, loosely compacted ball of black rocks that formed nearly 4.6 billion years ago. Recently, scientists accomplished an unprecedented feat, sending a spacecraft billions of miles to the asteroid and back to collect 121.6 grams of material from Bennu for study at an Arizona State University lab. NASA tasked the OSIRIS-REx team that retrieved material from Bennu to examine it for clues to the nature and origins of life.