Posted by tourdemars to Sample Return at April 15, 2004 04:36 PM

Somewhere over a wide stretch of Arizona desert today, the Jet Propulsion Laboratory will perform its best impersonation of James Bond. For a scientific facility best known for shipping six-wheeled rovers to Mars and flinging probes to the far corners of the solar system, the terrestrial exercises might seem a bit mundane. Then again, none of those missions ever involved stunt pilots or helicopters snatching a space probe from midair. This will be the first sample of space material returned to Earth since Apollo 17 came back from the moon in 1972. Other samples, however, will follow — from comets and asteroids and even Mars — as scientists seek to bring extraterrestrial materials back to Earth, where the full array of scientific instruments can be brought to bear on every rock and cosmic mite.