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<b>Helicopter Stunt Pilots to Snag Stardust for NASA</b><br /><br /><i>By Gina Keating</i><br /><br />LINK<br /><br />PASADENA, Calif. (Reuters) - NASA has recruited two Hollywood helicopter stunt pilots for an especially tricky maneuver -- snagging a capsule full of stardust as it parachutes back to Earth next month, mission managers said on Thursday.<br /><br />The mid-air retrieval 4,000 feet above the Utah desert on Sept. 8 is the planned climax to the space agency's $264 million Genesis mission, which began three years ago with the launch of a space probe to collect tiny charged particles called ions blown toward Earth from the sun.<br /><br />Scientists say the resulting cargo of solar ions, about 10 to 20 micrograms of oxygen, nitrogen and other elements that collectively weigh about as much as a few grains of salt, will yield key insights about the formation of planets at the dawn of the solar system.<br /><br />The novel scheme for snaring the re-entry capsule, thus sparing the canister from a rocky landing that could damage the delicate instruments and samples inside, was unveiled for reporters on Thursday at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena.<br /><br />The return of the Genesis probe will mark the first bits of extraterrestrial matter retrieved from space by human means since the 1970s, when moon rocks were carried back to Earth by manned U.S. Apollo and unmanned Soviet Luna missions, NASA said.<br /><br />If successful, it also will make aviation history as the first man-made object captured by aircraft as it entered Earth's atmosphere from space, said Roy Haggard, an aerospace research executive hired by NASA to design the Genesis retrieval project.<br /><br />He said helicopters were used in thousands of missions to grab parachuted canisters of film shot by spy cameras over Vietnam and the Soviet Union during the Cold War.<br /><br />But