Comet Dust Capsule Lands In Utah

A space capsule ferrying the first comet dust samples to Earth parachuted to a pre-dawn landing in the remote desert Sunday, drawing cheers from elated scientists.

The touchdown capped a seven-year journey by NASA's Stardust spacecraft, which zipped past a comet in 2004 to capture minute dust particles and store them in the capsule for the homecoming.

"It's an absolutely fantastic end to the mission," said Carlton Allen of NASA's Johnson Space Center.

A helicopter recovery team was searching the landing site for the capsule and was expected to transfer it to a clean room on the base. It will be flown later this week to the Johnson Space Center in Houston, where scientists will unlock the canister containing the cosmic particles.

Once opened, they will find the microscopic bits trapped in a porous, pale-blue smoke-like material made up of 99.8 percent air that was used to snag the dust in space.

The dust will be viewed under a microscope and analyzed. Because comets are frozen bodies of ice and dust from 4.6 billion years ago when the solar system was formed, researchers hope the comet dust will provide direct clues about the origin of our planetary system.

The cosmic samples were gathered from comet Wild 2 in 2004 during Stardust's seven years in space. The spacecraft used a tennis racket-sized collector mitt to snatch the dust and store them in an aluminum canister.

The capsule nose-dived through the Earth's atmosphere early Sunday at a record 29,000 mph, making it the fastest man-man probe to return. As it descended toward the desert, it unfurled its first parachute at 100,000 feet followed by a larger chute, which guided it to a gentle landing on the salt flats.

Afterward, engineers performed a thorough check on Stardust's systems and feel certain that it won't suffer the same fate as Genesis.

"They built this thing like a tank. They do believe that even if the parachute system failed, that they could still recover these samples," said CBS News space consultant Bill Harwood .

The mission, managed by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, cost $212 million.
Stardust's return to Earth was the reverse of the ill-fated Genesis mission that carried solar wind particles. In 2004, Genesis slammed into the desert and broke open like a clamshell, exposing the solar atoms to contamination.

During its mission, the Stardust captured comet dust, collecting a pay load that will barely fill a teaspoon – and yet the incredibly tiny samples were swirling about four and a half billion years ago, reports CBS News correspondent Jerry Bowen.

Scientists believe studying comets could shed light on how the solar system formed.

The dust grains, believed to be pristine leftovers from the birth of the solar system, contain many of the organic molecules necessary for life. Some of the particles are thought to be older than the sun.

Stardust's comet samples represent the second robotic retrieval of extraterrestrial material since 1976, when the unmanned Soviet Luna 24 mission brought back lunar rocks and soil.

The first was NASA's Genesis probe, which crashed at Dugway Proving Ground in 2004 during a failed mid-air attempt by Hollywood stunt pilots in helicopters to snag it. Scientists spent several days picking through the wreckage to salvage the fragile wafers containing solar wind atoms.

The accident was caused by the faulty installation of gravity switches designed to trigger the parachute release. Engineers reviewed Stardust's blueprints and rechecked its systems to make sure it wouldn't happen again.

Launched in 1999, the Stardust spacecraft traveled nearly 3 billion miles, looping around the sun three times.

In 2004, it flew through the comet's coma, a fuzzy halo of gas and dust. Outfitted with armored bumpers, the spacecraft survived a hail of debris to trap comet dust with a collector mitt packed with aerogel, a porous material made up of mostly air. The cosmic particles have since been tucked inside the capsule for the trip home.

Along the way, the spacecraft also captured interstellar dust, tiny particles that stream through the solar system thought to be from ancient stars that exploded and died.

The spacecraft also beamed back 72 black-and-white pictures showing broad mesas, craters, pinnacles and canyons with flat floors on the surface of Wild 2, a craggy comet about 500 million miles from Earth at launch.

Stardust's sample return is the latest mission designed to study comets up close.

Six months earlier, NASA sent a probe into the path of an onrushing comet. The high-speed collision with comet Tempel 1 set off a celestial fireworks display in space and exposed the comet's primordial interior.

Scientists have been analyzing the voluminous debris hurled from the comet's belly and are trying to figure out the size of the crater caused by the impact.