NASA’s First Asteroid Samples Land on Earth

From an AP story by Marcia Dunn headlined “NASA’s first asteroid samples land on Earth after release from spacecraft”:

NASA’s first asteroid samples fetched from deep space parachuted into the Utah desert Sunday to cap a seven-year journey.

In a flyby of Earth, the Osiris-Rex spacecraft released the sample capsule from 63,000 miles out. The small capsule landed four hours later on a remote expanse of military land, as the mothership set off after another asteroid.

“We have touchdown!” Mission Recovery Operations announced, immediately repeating the news since the landing occurred three minutes early. Officials later said the orange striped parachute opened four times higher than anticipated — around 20,000 feet — basing it on the deceleration rate.