Two chemical compounds necessary to living organisms have been found in material from the asteroid Ryugu. The Japanese spacecraft Hayabusa2 collected the materials and sent them back to Earth. The findings from an international group of scientists support the idea that some elements of life arrived on Earth from asteroids billions of years ago. Scientists said on Tuesday they discovered uracil and niacin in rocks collected by a Japanese Space Agency aircraft. The samples came from two places on Ryugu in 2019. Uracil is one of the chemicals present in RNA. RNA is a molecule carrying directions for building and operating living organisms. Niacin, also called Vitamin B3 or nicotinic acid, is important for metabolism. The Ryugu samples traveled 250 million kilometers back to Earth and returned to Earth’s surface in a container. The container landed in December 2020 in Australia.