Hasta La Gadget!

Back in 2004, NASA’s Stardust spacecraft passed right by Comet Wild 2’s nucleus and collected samples of the dense gas and dust material surrounding the icy center; two years later, a capsule containing those samples separated from the craft and returned to Earth.

Now scientists have discovered a fundamental building block for life–glycine–in those samples, according to NASA. “The discovery of glycine in a comet supports the idea that the fundamental building blocks of life are prevalent in space, and strengthens the argument that life in the universe may be common rather than rare,” said Carl Pilcher, director of the NASA Astrobiology Institute, which co-funded the research.

It’s taken this long because researchers spent two years developing the tools necessary to analyze the tiny sample, and to rule out (via isotopic analysis) that the glycine was from Earth and somehow contaminated the samples. (Image credit: NASA/Stardust rendering)