NASA's Stardust probe, launched nearly five years ago, on Friday crossed the path of the Wild-2 comet and captured the first specimens of comet dust, the US space agency said.Stardust is due to return to Earth in 2006.
The five-meter (16-foot) long probe came within 300 kilometers (186 miles) of the comet, a cratered sphere of ice and rock measuring more than five kilometers (3.1 miles) in diameter, at 1942 GMT.
The agency said it had received data transmitted by the probe, confirming the relatively close encounter at at a relative speed of 21,960 kilometers (13,645 miles) per hour.
Stardust's cameras also took 72 images of the comet during the flyby, NASA said.
The probe passed through the halo of dust that surrounds the nucleus of the comet, enabling it to capture some dust on a tennis-racket-shaped particle catcher.
NASA said the particle catcher is filled with a material called aerogel, a silicon dioxide substance that is "99.8 percent air, with enough 'give' to slow and stop particles without altering them radically."
Once the dust particles were snared, the collector folded like a clamshell, securing the samples for a scheduled parachute-assisted landing at the US Air Force's Test and Training Range in Utah in January 2006, NASA said.
From the chemical and physical data contained in the miniscule particles, researchers are hoping to gain clues to the formation of the solar system, the birth of the planets and the matter from which they were formed.
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Nov 02, 2006
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