NASA's Stardust spacecraft has taken its first image of its cometary quarry Wild 2, 25 million km (15 million miles) away, as the probe heads for a 300km fly-by of the 5.4km body, 390 million km from the Earth on 2 January 2004.
A recoverable re-entry capsule on board the spacecraft is scheduled to return to Earth in January 2006 with microscopic particles of the comet and interstellar dust collected earlier in the mission.
Source: Flight International