NASA photo, showing what they call a flying saucer from outer space, that they tracked by radar and chased with aircraft before it crashed in the Utah desert. (It looks like the salt flats out west of the Great Salt Lake.)
They explain that this is the the Genesis sample return capsule, part of the Genesis space probe launched in 2001 by NASA to study the Sun. The vehicle had been near the Sun collecting solar wind particles and then attempted to return the samples to Earth. The unexpectedly hard landing at over 300 kilometers per hour occurred because the parachutes did not open as planned. But NASA says that some of the samples were still intact and have provided good information on the abundance of various elements in the solar wind.
Nov 7, 2018 04:32 AM
![[Image: GenesisImpact_nasa_960.jpg]](https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/image/1811/GenesisImpact_nasa_960.jpg)