A space capsule carrying comet dust has returned to Earth at the end of a mission scientists hope will shed light on the origins of the solar system.
NASA's Stardustspacecraft, hovering 69,000 miles in space, released the shuttlecock-shaped capsule late last night putting it on course for a blazing re-entry today.
Undated NASA handout image of an artist's rendering of the Stardust spacecraft's Comet Wild 2 encounter.
The capsule entered the atmosphere and parachuted down in the Utah desert at 10.12 GMT. Its searing return at about 29,000 mph was the fastest re-entry of any man-made probe.
The mission marks the first time a spacecraft has flown into deep space and brought back tiny fragments of a comet.
Most of the granules are so small that a microscope will be required to study them.
The Stardustmothership will remain in permanent orbit around the sun.
Comets are frozen bodies of ice and dust that formed soon after a gaseous disk collapsed to create the sun and planets 4.6 billion years ago. Comets formed from what was left over, and studying them could shed light on the solar system's birth.
The cosmic samples were gathered from comet Wild 2 in 2004 during Stardust'sseven-year journey.
The spacecraft used a tennis racket-sized collector mitt to snatch the dust and store it in an aluminium canister. The mission was managed by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory.