NASA has recently captured a near-Earth asteroid, part of a mission to learn more about near-Earth bodies and nebular residue. Since asteroids in our solar system is practically “waste” from the creation of our local system, we may find things of interest within them about the beginning of mother Earth. Some scientists hypothesize that water or even life itself could’ve came from asteroids. Even our Moon, given that the most popular hypothesis is now the Giant Impact, is basically a huge asteroid (well, it’s more of a planet but it wasn’t in orbit of the sun).

We have also been observing things outside our Solar System, especially since NASA recently upgraded one of their telescopes so now we can observe exoplanets with infrared light much easier and more accurately. All this uneventful data-mining and the countless manpower and time that has been put in to space exploration may seem unnecessary at times, or not worthy of an investment. But it is also to answer one of the main questions and motivation of this work: alien life and the origin of life.  If you ask the average rocket scientist whether there’s alien life, you will most likely get a uniform answer that it is not a question of “if”, but “when” and “where”. Since we exist, and we know Earth is not as special a planet as our hubris would like us to think, there is most likely some other planet out there very similar to Earth. But the question is when we will find that new-Earth, and where it is.

http://www.astrobio.net/pressrelease/5641/new-images-reveal-nasas-asteroid-capture-mission