These are literally the building blocks of our planetary system. All of the atoms in our bodies - the carbon atoms, the oxygen, the nitrogen, potassium, calcium and so forth - all of those atoms were in stardust grains like those coming out of the comet now before the solar system formed.

Virtually all of the atoms in our bodies and in the Earth were in interstellar grains - stardust grains - before the solar system formed. We're using this comet as a library that picked up records of the formation of our solar system, and has been storing them far from the sun at very low temperatures for four and a half billion years.

About 10 per cent of this comet is made of organic materials. We don't know exactly what they all are but it is very exciting.

You're seeing the very first, absolutely identified comet particle that has ever been seen.

We are confident [the comet] was made out of the initial building blocks of our solar system.

We are collecting the actual building blocks the solar system was formed from 4.5 billion years ago. We believe that the particles have a lot of information stored in them.