That's NASA's armored comet probe, which yesterday, 242 million miles away, on the other side of the sun, survived an unprecedented flight through Comet Wild-2's gas and dust tail, grabbing up pieces of the debris as they came at it at six times the speed of an assault rifle bullet.
This is the first space mission designed to collect samples and bring them back to earth since the moon missions. The comet treasure is to be parachuted to earth over the Utah desert, sealed in a reentry pod, in January 2006.
NASA scientists believe this material, 4.6 billion years old, "undercooked leftovers" of the gas and dust that formed the planets and sun, may answer fundamental questions about the origins of the solar system and life on earth. These specks are frozen time capsules.
Here's a picture of Comet Wild-2. The big crater is about two miles across.
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