NASA · sample return ended
Stardust
Stardust captured dust from comet Wild 2 and returned it to Earth in 2006, the first sample ever brought back from a comet.
- Launch
- 7 February 1999
- End of mission
- 24 March 2011
Trajectory
Trajectory: JPL Horizons vectors (spacecraft -29) every 3 days, projected onto the ecliptic; compressed distance scale.
Mission timeline
- Launch on a Delta II from Cape Canaveral
- Flies through the coma of comet Wild 2, collecting dust
- Sample capsule lands in Utah
- Flyby of comet Tempel 1, imaging the Deep Impact crater
- Final engine burn and last transmission
Targets: Comet Wild 2, Comet Tempel 1
About the mission
Stardust carried a tennis-racket-shaped collector filled with aerogel, an extremely light foam that could slow down dust grains hitting it at several kilometres per second without destroying them. In January 2004 it flew through the coma of comet Wild 2 and caught thousands of particles, which landed in a capsule in the Utah desert in January 2006. Analysis showed that the comet contains minerals formed at high temperature close to the young Sun. Extended as NExT, the spacecraft photographed comet Tempel 1 in 2011, including the crater made by Deep Impact, before it was switched off.