NASA is celebrating the successful end of a 7-year, $1 billion mission to collect and return a sample from the asteroid Bennu. CBS News' Mark Strassmann has more on the mission. And Derrick Pitts, chief astronomer at the Franklin Institute, joined CBS News to discuss the significance of the samples.

Retrieved asteroid samples hold the key to unlocking secrets about the early solar system, offering a glimpse into the conditions and processes that shaped our planetary neighborhood billions of years ago.

These samples, painstakingly collected by missions like Hayabusa2 and OSIRIS-REx, represent pristine remnants from the solar system's formative period, offering a level of detail unavailable through telescopic observation alone.

The analysis of these samples promises to shed light on several crucial aspects of the solar system's birth: Planetary Building Blocks: Asteroids are essentially leftover building blocks from the solar system's formation.

Their composition provides clues about the distribution of materials in the early solar nebula, the rotating cloud of gas and dust from which the sun and planets formed.

By studying the isotopes and minerals within the samples, scientists can reconstruct the conditions present in the early solar nebula, including its temperature, pressure, and chemical composition.

Water Delivery to Earth: A significant portion of Earth's water is believed to have originated from asteroid impacts.

Analyzing the isotopic ratios of water molecules in asteroid samples can determine whether certain asteroid types were a major source of Earth's oceans.

This helps us understand the conditions necessary for the emergence of life on our planet.

Organic Molecule Formation: Asteroid samples may contain organic molecules, the building blocks of life.

By identifying and characterizing these molecules, researchers can gain insights into the processes that led to the formation of prebiotic molecules, and potentially even the origin of life itself.

The presence of certain organic compounds can indicate whether the conditions on early asteroids were conducive to the emergence of life.

Dating the Solar System: Precise dating of asteroid materials using radioactive dating techniques helps refine our understanding of the timeline of solar system formation.

This allows us to better constrain the age of the sun, planets, and other celestial bodies.

Asteroid Evolution: The samples provide insights into how asteroids have changed over billions of years.

This includes understanding processes such as thermal metamorphism (heating and alteration due to radioactive decay), aqueous alteration (interaction with water), and shock events (impacts from other celestial bodies).

The study of returned asteroid samples is an ongoing process.

As scientists meticulously analyze the samples using advanced laboratory techniques, our understanding of the solar system's origin and evolution will continue to refine and expand, bringing us closer to answering fundamental questions about our place in the cosmos.

The data acquired from these missions is not just valuable for understanding the past; it also contributes to our understanding of the risks posed by near-Earth asteroids and informs future planetary defense strategies.