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Soyuz capsules are designed to land onto land. To avoid the small chance of harming people or property, they are usually targeted to land in remote parts of Kazakhstan. However, some landings aren't perfectly on target (see this question and this answer), and Kazakhstan is not completely empty.

What is the record for the closest that a Soyuz capsule has come to hitting a building? If pictures are available, please add them to your answer.

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    $\begingroup$ How about spent first stages? Lots of those in china. $\endgroup$ – geoffc Jun 25 at 14:34
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    $\begingroup$ @geoffc: I'm specifically looking for the descent module that the cosmonauts return inside. Booster stages, orbital module, and service module are not in the scope of this question. $\endgroup$ – DrSheldon Jun 25 at 14:51
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Nothing is quite like spending the evening looking at blurry satellite photos of Kazakhstan. The landing area of Soyuz TM-26 had a relatively crowded landing area, with several probable buildings close to it:

50.18°N 67.50°E

enter image description here

Wikipedia has the landing coordinates in two-digit decimal degrees, which gives a north-south accuracy of about 1km, and a slightly better east-west resolution. The likely source, however, spacefacts.de, has it in degrees and minutes, which has a slightly worse resolution.

Taking those accuracy problems into account, the flight most likely landed within 1 km of a building.

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