A NASA spacecraft crashed in the Utah desert on September 8, 2004. The Genesis mission was the space agency's effort to send a spacecraft into our star's solar wind, collect samples, and bring them back to Earth.
The spacecraft captured the solar wind by deploying a series of collecting arrays, each loaded with high-purity materials such as aluminum, sapphire, silicon and even gold. Some of the resistant collecting materials survived and the researchers managed to clean the surfaces without altering the solar material embedded within.