A NASA space capsule returning solar ions to Earth crashed in the Utah desert Wednesday after its parachute failed to deploy during an attempted mid-air recovery.

Reports said the disc-shaped capsule carrying extraterrestrial matter was jettisoned as planned by the Genesis spacecraft but its parachute did not open and crashed on the floor of the Utah desert.

It was not immediately known whether the solar particles the capsule carried back to Earth after a three year mission had been lost. NASA officials believed the fragile disks that held the atoms would shatter even if the capsule took a landing with a parachute. Scientists believe the solar ions the capsule carried would help them further understand the origins and evolution of the solar system.

The solar particles were the first extraterrestrial matter to be returned to Earth by a spacecraft since the 1970s when the US Apollo and Soviet Luna missions brought back moon rocks.

Two Hollywood helicopter stunt pilots had been employed by NASA to snatch the capsule from sky, but their mission was aborted when the parachute failed to deploy.

(Xinhua News Agency September 9, 2004)