The US space agency NASA announced the arrival of samples of what it described as “the most dangerous rock known in the solar system” to Earth.
The capsule carrying the samples landed in the western desert of the US state of Utah, the culmination of a seven-year mission to study the rock, according to the BBC, reports Al-Rai daily.
Samples were collected from the surface of the asteroid Bennu in 2020 by the Osiris-Rex spacecraft.
NASA wants to know more about the mountainous object, for reasons including fears that it will strike our planet within the next 300 years.
The car tire-sized container initially moved at more than 12 km/s (27,000 mph) and experienced a peak heating of more than 3,000 degrees Celsius, but a heat shield and parachutes slowed its descent and gently dropped it to safe ground on the desert plain.
