Stardust Program

NASA’s Stardust mission was the first spacecraft to return a cometary sample and extraterrestrial material from beyond lunar orbit. Launched on February 7, 1999, it collected comet Wild 2 and interstellar dust in aerogel, returned the capsule to Earth in 2006, and was later recycled for the Stardust-NExT flyby of comet Tempel 1 in 2011. The Discovery Program mission was managed by JPL for NASA.