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NASA�s Stardust capsule landed in the Utah desert at around 10:12GMT on Sunday 15 January, after a round trip of almost 4.6 billion kilometres. The capsule contains the first samples of comet material ever returned to Earth Scientists hope the material will help them understand the origins of our Solar System, and possibly life on Earth.
Don Brownlee, Stardust principal investigator, said yesterday: "I fully expect textbooks in the future will have a lot of new information from the samples that landed here this morning."
The capsule became the fastest man-made probe ever to have descended through the Earth�s atmosphere, as it plummeted at speeds of up to 47 000 kilometres an hour. The capsule began deploying its parachutes at a height of around 32 kilometres, to slow its descent.
The Stardust capsule also contains samples of interstellar dust � particles that may be older than our Sun, and could shed light on the formation of distant stars.
Monica Grady, of the Open University's Planetary and Space Science Research Institute (PSSRI), said: "Imagine trying to pick up a grain that is less than a hundredth of the size of the full stop at the end of this sentence. It is amazing to think that such minute specks of dust can carry within them so much information about the origin of stars and planets."
Stardust was launched on 7 February 1999 and reached comet Wild 2 in January 2004. It is thought to have collected around a million particles of ice and dust as it passed close to the comet, and a further 45 particles of interstellar dust.
More info: NASA: Stardust;OU: PSSRI
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