NASA asteroid latest: Scientists reveal 'incredible' first sample from 4.5 billion-year-old space object - which contains clues to origins of life

Here's our full report on today's revelations - along with science correspondent Thomas Moore's analysis of what they might mean:

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After a series of fascinating revelations about the contents of the sample recovered from the near-Earth asteroid Bennu - and amid very palpable excitement from those gathered at Johnson Space Centre in Houston - the NASA representatives wrap things up.

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We'll post a round up of today's main revelations here a little later.

The assembled scientists are asked if there is any chance they (or more accurately, a NASA spacecraft) will attempt to return to the Bennu asteroid.

Lori Glaze says she suspects the agency will focus on other asteroids for future research.

Daniel Glavin - who's snappy full title is Senior Scientist for Sample Return in the Solar System Exploration Division at NASA - explains why any return to Bennu may spell bad news.

"I actually hope we don't have to go back to Bennu, because [that would mean] it probably is on a collision course [with Earth] and we have to deflect it," he says, eliciting laughter in the room.

Lori Glaze, director of NASA's planetary science division, continues to talk about potentially dangerous asteroids.

She says the mission allowed NASA to measure a small force created by the sun's heat and an asteroid's rotation.

She said this force was "really important for helping us to predict when a particular asteroid might be dangerous".

"What we really want to know is if an asteroid is going to cross over Earth's orbit at the same time that we are in that place, and we want to not be in that place when an asteroid comes by."

The asteroid "kept surprising us" and will help NASA in "defending our planet in the future", says Lori Glaze, director of NASA's planetary science division.

She is referring to the lack of resistance from the "rubble pile asteroid" when the spacecraft's robotic arm touched the surface.

"That's really important as we start thinking about future planetary defence missions," she says.

"As we start to look at asteroids that are potentially hazardous, one of the things we really want to know is, is it a dense monolithic rock, or is it just this loose collection of debris."

The sample allows NASA to model what dangerous asteroids could pose, says Ms Glaze.

"We have actually learned an incredible amount from Bennu that is going to help us in defending out planet in the future."

by Thomas Moore, science correspondent

You can sense the excitement of NASA scientists as they took a look at the dust and rock grains brought back from Asteroid Bennu in a super-clean room.

There is so much material that it has spilled out of the collection canister.

It has slowed down the process of curating the sample – they don’t want to waste it – so they have only had a few days to run some basic analysis on the material.

It shows that there is lots of carbon – an essential element for organic compounds that are the building blocks of life .

But it also has fibrous clay minerals containing water.

Scientists believe asteroids bombarding Earth billions of years ago brought water that created the oceans, as well as organic molecules that were the seeds for life.

There’s much more work to be done now to understand exactly what chemistry and structure of the asteroid

Asked about the varying rock sizes collected in the sample, Dante Lauretta, Osiris-Rex principal investigator, says he is particularly excited about some of them.

The different sized stones will provide the scientists with a range of data, he explains

Big ones contain minerals in context with each other, providing information about the chemistry within the rock.

Meanwhile, fine particles were likely bigger stones on the Bennu asteroid, but fell apart in Earths gravity.

"Something like that would not make it to the surface of the earth as a meteorite," says Mr Lauretta

"So to have something from space that we have never seen in our laboratories, there is nothing more exciting."

Lori Glaze, director of NASA planetary science division, says the scientific discoveries won't end here.

"There is so much incredible work to happen," she says. 

Scientists are yet to get the full sample, at which point they can get a "full picture of what we collected", she says. 

An Osiris-Rex sample analyst says the sample is "loaded with organics - this is just incredible material".

Daniel Glavin comments on the presence of carbon, saying it composes "the building blocks of life - and this is the part I find really exciting." 

This is because he is investigating whether asteroids like Bennu seeded the Earth with pre-biotic chemicals.

"We picked the right asteroid, and not only that we brought back the right sample," says Mr Glavin.

"This stuff is an astrobiologist's dream, I just can't wait to get at it."

He continues: "We're going to learn so much about the origin of the solar system, the evolution and potentially how even life started here on earth."

Dante Lauretta, OSIRIS-Rex principal investigator, says scientists found in the sample water-bearing clay minerals.

These have a "fibrous kind of structure" with "water locked inside their crystal structure", he says. 

"That water is how we think water got to the Earth," he says.

"The reason we think Earth is a habitable world is because these clay minerals landed on Earth four billion years ago."