Did Asteroid Strikes Help Spur Life on Earth?

A NASA spacecraft is about to launch toward an asteroid whose cousins may have sparked the rise of life on Earth long ago. If all goes according to plan, OSIRIS-REx will meet up with Bennu in 2020, grab some dirt and rocks from the asteroid's surface two years later, and return the sample to Earth in September 2023. Scientists in labs around the world will scrutinize this cosmic material for organic molecules, the carbon-containing building blocks of life as we know it.