NASA's spacecraft Stardust, flies within 155 miles from the comet P/Wild 2, on January 2, 2004 and collects dust grains and the cometary material. Stardust sealed its collected matter inside a sample reentry capsule, which separated from Stardust and landed in the Utah desert on Jan. 15, 2006. They were later revealed to contain the amino acid glycine, an essential building block of life.
Key Dates:
Feb. 7, 1999: Launch
Feb. 22 to May 1, 2000: First interstellar dust collection operation was carried out
Jan. 15, 2001: Stardust flew by Earth for a gravity assist
Nov. 2, 2002: Stardust flew by asteroid 5535 Annefrank
Jan. 2, 2004: Closest encounter with Comet Wild 2 (or 81P/Wild)
Jan. 15, 2006: Stardust’s Sample Return Capsule (SRC) returns to Earth
July 2007: NASA approved extended mission known as New Exploration of Tempel 1 (NExT)
Feb. 15, 2011: Stardust/NExT flew by comet Tempel 1
March 24, 2011: The spacecraft carried out a final engine and sent its last transmission ending the mission. More
