NASA Capsule Brings Largest Asteroid Sample To Earth

Sample may provide a better understanding of the formation of our solar system and how Earth became habitable

A seven-year space voyage came to its climactic end on Sunday when a US National Aeronautics and Space Administration (Nasa) capsule landed in the desert in the US state of Utah, carrying to Earth the largest asteroid samples ever collected.

Scientists have high hopes for the sample, saying it will provide a better understanding of the formation of our solar system and how Earth became habitable.

"Touchdown of the Osiris-Rex sample return capsule!" a commentator said on Nasa's live video webcast of the landing.

It completed a 3.86-billion-mile (6.21-billion-kilometre) journey. It marked "the US's first sample return mission of its kind and will open a time capsule to the beginnings of our solar system," the US space agency said in a post on X, the former Twitter.

The Osiris-Rex probe's final, fiery descent through Earth's atmosphere was perilous, but Nasa managed to engineer a soft landing at 8.52am local time (1452 GMT), in the military's Utah Test and Training Range.

Four years after its 2016 launch, the probe had landed on the asteroid Bennu and collected roughly nine ounces (250gm) of dust from its rocky surface.

Even that small amount, Nasa says, should "help us better understand the types of asteroids that could threaten Earth" and cast light "on the earliest history of our solar system," Nasa administrator Bill Nelson said.