A long, long way to go

[unixronin]

After seven years and three billion miles, the Stardust probe successfully returned to Earth and soft-landed a sample of dust from Comet Wild 2 to the Utah desert at 1012Z today.  As well as the first cometary dust samples ever returned to earth and the first samples of anything ever returned to Earth from beyond the Moon, this marks the furthest any probe has ever travelled from Earth and successfully returned to date, and the fastest re-entry of any man-made probe (at around 29,000mph).

Good job, NASA!