An international team of researchers may have answered one of space science’s long-running questions – and it could change our understanding of how life began.

Carbon-rich asteroids are abundant in space yet make up less than 5 per cent of meteorites found on Earth.

An international team of scientists from Curtin University’s School of Earth and Planetary Sciences, the International Centre for Radio Astronomy (ICRAR), the Paris Observatory and more scoured the globe to find an answer.