NASA capsule carrying largest asteroid samples lands on Earth

A NASA space capsule carrying the largest soil sample ever collected from the surface of an asteroid has landed in the Utah desert seven years after the mission's launch. Flight Control announced on Sunday. The gumdrop-shaped capsule, released from the robotic spacecraft OSIRIS-REx as the mothership passed within 108,000km (67,000 miles) of Earth hours earlier, touched down within a designated landing zone west of Salt Lake City on the United States military's vast Utah Test and Training Range. The samples will be flown on Monday to a new lab at NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston. The building already houses nearly 400kg (842lb) of moon rocks gathered by the Apollo astronauts more than a half-century ago.