Stardust-NExT:
Goals: Stardust was designed to capture comet dust and other interstellar materials in a special collector and return them safely to Earth. After its successful encounter with comet Wild 2, the spacecraft was sent on an extended mission to study comet Tempel 1 -- the Stardust-NExT mission.
Accomplishments: On January 2, 2004, Stardust flew within 236 kilometers of Comet Wild 2 and captured thousands of particles in its aerogel collector. It then returned those samples to Earth in a special capsule -- the first collection of extraterrestrial samples from beyond the orbit of the Moon. The samples, primordial material from a cometary nucleus, unchanged since the birth of our solar system 4.6 billion years ago, produced a wealth of scientific data. The mission revealed comets were more complex than previously thought and carried with them the basic building blocks of life.
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Scientists discovered glycine, a fundamental building block of life, in samples of comet Wild 2 returned by Stardust spacecraft.
