Safe landing for comet dust samples

A SPACE capsule carrying the first comet dust samples to Earth parachuted to a pre-dawn landing in the Utah desert in the US yesterday, 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.

A helicopter recovery team located the capsule and transferred it to a clean room at the nearby Michael Army Air Field. The capsule will tomorrow be flown to the Johnson Space Centre in Houston where scientists will unlock the canister containing the cosmic particles.