Not only is their probably life outside of Earth inside our solar system, it is probably a lot more common than we think. That is the conclusion of a new study published Wednesday that bases its conclusions on evidence like two meteorites that smashed into Earth back in 1998.

The meteorites are intriguing because they had tiny salt crystals that contained a little bit of extraterrestrial water that had organic compounds, which are life’s building blocks. The researchers think there most likely is life somewhere in our neighborhood, and it appears scientists are taking the right steps in order to eventually recover it.

Missions like the Dawn spacecraft, which explored dwarf planet Ceres, found evidence of sodium chloride or salt as well as sulfur dioxide, which was also found in the samples from these ancient meteorites. It suggests that the conditions for life exist perhaps all around us, and the challenge is figuring out where to look.

“Two wayward space rocks, which separately crashed to Earth in 1998 after circulating in our solar system’s asteroid belt for billions of years, share something else in common: the ingredients for life,” reads the statement from the DOE and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. “They are the first meteorites found to contain both liquid water and a mix of complex organic compounds such as hydrocarbons and amino acids.

“A detailed study of the chemical makeup within tiny blue and purple salt crystals sampled from these meteorites, which included results from X-ray experiments at the Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab), also found evidence for the pair’s past intermingling and likely parents,” it continues. “These include Ceres, a dwarf planet that is the largest object in the asteroid belt, and the asteroid Hebe, a major source of meteorites that fall on Earth.”