In what may prove to be an indispensible chunk of information that has the potential to help the scientist immersed in the never ending quest to find out how life on Earth began, a space capsule carrying a cargo of comet and interstellar dust particles is all set to zoom right into Earth’s atmosphere this Sunday.

If all goes according to plan, this space capsule, will be ejected by the spacecraft aptly named Stardust and will drift down safely to the U.S. Air Force’s Utah Test and Training Range at 28,860 miles (44,446 kilometers) an hour. The 2 million, Stardust mission, that was launched a good seven years ago on February 7, 1999 is believed to have travelled more than three-billion-miles (4.6-billion-kilometer). According to the current plan, when Stardust’s capsule drops to approximately 105,000 feet (32,000 meters), a small parachute will open up to slow the speeding craft. At about 10,000 feet (3,048 meters) the main parachute will be used, to ensure a soft landing.

The landing of the capsule with samples, photographs and other data from comets assumes special significance as scientists believe that comets are icy, rocky debris left over from the beginning of the solar system 4.5 billion years ago. They expect that the analysis of these samples will help them better understand how the planets formed and evolved and retarce the very beginning of life on Earth. Scientists believe the particles Stardust collected from comet Wild 2 (pronounced Vilt 2) are composed of compounds, minerals, and structures that have remained unaltered for billions of years.

Expressing excitement about these latest samples and underlining their importance and significance in enabling the scientists to complete the jigsaw puzzle of life and its beginings, Donald Brownlee, an astronomy professor at the University of Washington in Seattle and the principal investigator for the NASA’s Stardust mission said, "The samples we collected are the same particles that went into the formation of the comet four and a half billion years ago. These are literally the building blocks of our planetary system. Personally, I feel a strong attachment to this thing and we should all feel a strong attachment to it because the fact is all the atoms in our bodies, the carbon atoms and the oxygen, nitrogen, potassium and calcium and so forth -- all those atoms were in stardust rings ... before the solar system formed. Looking at these particles will be somewhat like looking at an ancient book and still being able to read the words and understand the story they tell."

Referring to the return capsule released by spacecraft, NASA’s Tom Duxbury, who is Stardust’s project manager at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, said at a press conference, "As we come in over the western United States, this thing will light up the night sky for a brief period of time. The fireball itself could be visible up to 30 seconds during the capsule’s high-speed, heat-shield protected plunge. The sky show is expected to be visible from central California through central Oregon, on through Nevada and into Utah."

Describing the capsule, he added, "It is our knight in shining armor, wrapped in heat-thwarting material to take the heat generated during the speedy atmospheric dive. Tucked inside the capsule, a collector grid contains the precious cargo of interstellar and comet particles."

As per plan, once the capsule lands, a canister containing the aerogel, a special material in which the dust has been trapped, will be transported to the Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas. There, the samples will be cataloged and sent to scientists around the world for analysis.