(VOVWORLD) - A NASA space capsule carrying the largest soil sample ever scooped up from the surface of an asteroid streaked through Earth's atmosphere on Sunday and parachuted into the Utah desert, delivering the celestial specimen to scientists.
The gumdrop-shaped capsule, released from the robotic spacecraft OSIRIS-REx as the mothership passed within 67,000 miles (107,826 km) of Earth hours earlier, touched down within a designated landing zone west of Salt Lake City on the US military's vast Utah Test and Training Range.
The final descent and landing, shown on a NASA livestream, capped a six-year joint mission between the US space agency and the University of Arizona.
It was only the third asteroid sample, and by far the biggest, ever returned to Earth for analysis, following two similar missions by Japan's space agency ending in 2010 and 2020.
OSIRIS-REx collected its specimen three years ago from Bennu, a small, carbon-rich asteroid discovered in 1999.
The dark capsule and its precious content were flown by helicopter to a "clean room" at the Utah test range for initial examination. On Monday it will be flown on a military transport plane to NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston, where the canister will be opened on Tuesday in order for the samples to be parceled into smaller specimens promised to some 200 scientists in 60 laboratories around the world.