Last year, researchers excitedly announced that they had found two organic compounds essential for living organisms in samples retrieved from an asteroid called Ryugu. The Japanese Space Agency's Hayabusa2 spacecraft obtained the samples from the space rock in 2019.

A sample of the asteroid Ryugu returned to Earth by the Hayabusa2 mission was rapidly colonized by terrestrial microorganisms, new research has revealed.

Samples taken from the space-returned piece of asteroid Ryugu were collected and prepared under strict anti-contamination controls. Inside the cleanest of clean rooms, a tiny particle was