Nasa has made history once again by obtaining soil samples from the “most dangerous known rock in the Solar System”.

The capsule carrying the samples landed at 8.52am MDT in the selected area of the Department of Defense’s Utah Test and Training Range near Salt Lake City. 

The mission was designed by Nasa’s Osiris-Rex (Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification and Security – Regolith Explorer) team, which aimed to obtain the third and largest sample ever collected from an asteroid.

“We heard, ‘main chute detected,’ and I literally broke into tears,” Dante Lauretta, a University of Arizona scientist who has been involved in the project since its origin, told a press conference.

Tim Prizer, a Lockheed Martin engineer on the project, said: “We touched down as soft as a dove.”

The sample was collected by the Osiris-Rex spacecraft three years ago after a two-year journey to Bennu, a small, carbon-rich asteroid discovered in 1999. It passes...