Stardust

Stardust was a NASA robotic space probe launched in 1999 to collect dust samples from the coma of Comet Wild 2 and return them to Earth, along with samples of interstellar dust collected during its journey. The spacecraft used a lightweight substance called aerogel to capture particles without destroying them, flying through the comet coma in January 2004 before its sample return capsule parachuted into the Utah desert in January 2006. It was the first mission to return samples from a comet and the first to return solid material from beyond the orbit of the Moon.