"spacecraft"

The crew is comprised of three Americans -- Michael Hopkins, Victor Glover and Shannon Walker -- and Japan's Soichi Noguchi.

This is the first of what NASA calls “operational” flights of the Crew Dragon.

The spacecraft carrying NASA astronauts Michael Hopkins, Victor Glover, and Shannon Walker, along with Soichi Noguchi of the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency has safely reached orbit, NASA said.

The probe is thought to have collected some 400 grams (14 ounces) of fragments, far more than the minimum of 60 grams needed.

In reviewing these images, the OSIRIS-REx team noticed both that the head appeared to be full of asteroid particles, and that some of these particles appeared to be escaping slowly from the sample collector.

The mission's primary goal is to obtain a sample of at least 60 g (2.1 oz) from 101955 Bennu, a carbonaceous near-Earth asteroid and return the sample to Earth for a detailed analysis.

The crew landed just south of the town of Dzhezkazgan, Kazakhstan, at 8.54 am Kazakhstan time, NASA said.

NASA's first mission to return a sample from an ancient asteroid -- the Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification, Security-Regolith Explorer, or OSIRIS-Rex -- is a seven-year long voyage

At 5.32 a.m. EDT (3 p.m. India time), Expedition 63 Commander Chris Cassidy of NASA used the robotic Canadarm2 to grapple the Northrop Grumman Cygnus spacecraft as Ivan Vagner of Roscosmos monitored Cygnus systems during its approach.

Point Nemo is named after author Jules Verne's famous seafaring anti-hero Captain Nemo.

Its features improve on current space toilet operations and help NASA prepare for future missions, including those to the Moon and Mars.