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The culmination of Nasa's Osirix-Rex mission saw a probe sent more than 300 million kilometres from Earth to collect rock and dust. A select few scientists have been examining its samples from the asteroid brought back last month, before the investigation continues across the world in different scientific institutions.

There's a theory that carbon-rich or organic, water-rich asteroids similar to Bennu may have been involved in delivering key components to the young Earth system some 4.5 billion years ago. It's potentially how we got the water in our oceans and some of the compounds that were necessary to kick-start life.

The Bennu samples will be used to test these ideas. Newsday heard from Dr Jason Dworkin at the Johnson Space Centre in Houston - the Chief of the Astrochemistry Laboratory at Nasa who's been working on the Osiris-Rex project for nearly two decades.

"We see an abundance of carbon and water-altered minerals so we went to the right asteroid... it will tell us about how the Earth formed. We need to make sure... we don't have contamination from the Earth's biosphere so there is a very slow and methodical process of opening up the sample. We haven't even removed the lid [of the inner canister] yet, we only see the rocks that have fallen on the outside of it."

(Pic: Bennu rock sample on the lid of the inner cannister; Credit: Nasa)

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