The US space agency has provided its Japanese counterpart with a portion of the geological samples that its spacecraft collected from an asteroid.

Last September, NASA's OSIRIS-REx mission brought back a capsule containing sand and other samples taken from Bennu, an asteroid located between the orbits of Earth and Mars. The samples weighed 121.6 grams in total.

NASA handed over roughly 0.6 grams of them to the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency, or JAXA, on Thursday in accordance with a bilateral deal.

JAXA's Hayabusa2 probe delivered samples from the asteroid Ryugu to Earth in 2020. Scientists hope that comparing samples from the two asteroids will shed more light on the origins of life on Earth and the formation of the solar system.

JAXA researchers are already analyzing the Bennu samples, including measuring the weight of the sand grains. They plan to cooperate with scientists at Japanese research institutes that have studied the Ryugu samples.

A member of JAXA's Astromaterials Science Research Group, Tachibana Shogo, said at a news conference that the Bennu samples appear similar to those from Ryugu, being mostly blackish with some white areas and a wide range of shades in between.

He said he is looking forward to seeing what can be uncovered by the researchers who have thoroughly studied the Ryugu samples.