<P> The Earth - Orbital Debris Collection (ODC) experiment was deployed on the Mir space station for 18 months during 1996--1997 and used aerogel to capture particles from low Earth orbit, consisting of interplanetary dust and man - made particles . Far from being "the last sample - return mission...in...twenty years", ODC was a portable version of an LDEF collector, decreasing collection time significantly, and effective area by orders of magnitude . </P> <P> The next mission to return extraterrestrial samples was known as Genesis--it was able to return solar wind samples to Earth from beyond Earth orbit . Unfortunately, the Genesis capsule failed to open its parachute while re-entering the Earth's atmosphere and crash - landed in the Utah desert in 2004 . There were fears of severe contamination or even total mission loss, but scientists have managed to save many of the samples, which were the first to be collected from beyond lunar orbit . Genesis used a collector array made of wafers of ultra-pure silicon, gold, sapphire, and diamond . Each different wafer was used to collect a different part of the solar wind . </P> <P> Genesis was followed by NASA's Stardust spacecraft, which returned comet samples to Earth on January 15, 2006 . It safely passed by Comet Wild 2 and collected dust samples from the comet's coma while imaging the comet's nucleus . Stardust used a collector array made of low - density aerogel (99% of which is empty space), which has about 1 / 1000 of the density of glass . This permits the ability to collect the cometary particles without damaging them due to high impact velocities . Particle collisions with even slightly porous solid collectors would result in destruction of those particles and damage to the collection apparatus . During cruise, the second side of the array collected at least seven interstellar dust particles . </P> <P> In June 2010 the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) Hayabusa probe returned asteroid samples to Earth after a rendezvous with (and a landing on) S - type asteroid 25143 Itokawa . In November 2010, scientists at the agency confirmed that, despite failure of the sampling device, the probe retrieved micrograms of dust from the asteroid, the first ever brought back to Earth in pristine condition . </P>

What real life mission returned a sample from a comet