The Stardust spacecraft collected thousands of particles from comet 81P/Wild 2 and returned them to Earth for laboratory study. The preliminary examination of these samples reveals that the nonvolatile portion of the comet is composed of an unequilibrated mixture of materials with both presolar and solar system origins. The comet contains a significant abundance of large silicate grains, many of which are high-temperature minerals that likely formed in the inner regions of the solar nebula. This discovery indicates that the formation of the solar system involved large-scale mixing on a grand scale. The Stardust mission, part of NASA's Discovery program, retrieved samples from a comet believed to have formed at the outer fringe of the solar nebula. The samples, isolated from the planetary region of the solar system for billions of years, provide new insights into the formation of the solar system. The particles collected by Stardust are the first primitive materials from a known body, offering contextual insight for all primitive meteoritic samples. The samples were collected in silica aerogel, a porous glass, and the particles were modified to some degree by capture, with larger components often well preserved while smaller or finer-grained components were strongly modified. The Stardust mission has provided valuable information about the formation of comets, the origin of crystalline silicates around stars, and large-scale mixing in the solar nebula. The presence of presolar materials and high-temperature minerals in the comet suggests that there was radial transport of solids over large spatial scales in the solar nebula. The Stardust mission has opened a new window of insight into the origin of solid grains that form disks around stars and lead to the formation of planetary bodies.The Stardust spacecraft collected thousands of particles from comet 81P/Wild 2 and returned them to Earth for laboratory study. The preliminary examination of these samples reveals that the nonvolatile portion of the comet is composed of an unequilibrated mixture of materials with both presolar and solar system origins. The comet contains a significant abundance of large silicate grains, many of which are high-temperature minerals that likely formed in the inner regions of the solar nebula. This discovery indicates that the formation of the solar system involved large-scale mixing on a grand scale. The Stardust mission, part of NASA's Discovery program, retrieved samples from a comet believed to have formed at the outer fringe of the solar nebula. The samples, isolated from the planetary region of the solar system for billions of years, provide new insights into the formation of the solar system. The particles collected by Stardust are the first primitive materials from a known body, offering contextual insight for all primitive meteoritic samples. The samples were collected in silica aerogel, a porous glass, and the particles were modified to some degree by capture, with larger components often well preserved while smaller or finer-grained components were strongly modified. The Stardust mission has provided valuable information about the formation of comets, the origin of crystalline silicates around stars, and large-scale mixing in the solar nebula. The presence of presolar materials and high-temperature minerals in the comet suggests that there was radial transport of solids over large spatial scales in the solar nebula. The Stardust mission has opened a new window of insight into the origin of solid grains that form disks around stars and lead to the formation of planetary bodies.