From AP:
"SALT LAKE CITY — NASA scientists said Friday they had recovered some intact materials from the wreckage of the Genesis space capsule (search) that crashed this week and were hopeful that the mission to gather solar atoms could be salvaged.

"We should be able to meet many, if not all, of our science goals," said physicist Roger C. Wiens of the Los Alamos National Laboratory (search).

The capsule, launched into space in 2001, crashed while returning to Earth on Wednesday, slamming into the ground at nearly 200 mph after parachutes failed to open. It cracked open like a clamshell, and left an inner canister containing the disks badly damaged.

Some 350 palm-sized wafers made up five disks that were open to the solar wind during the mission, collecting atoms from the sun. Scientists had feared the wafers shattered like glass in the crash, and many of them did. But they were surprised to find some fully intact, and were characterizing it as good news.

"We want to try to get out as much of those (wafers) as we can," Wiens said.

Those platters were packed so tightly in the wreckage of the crash, it took scientists more than a day to pry them apart and inspect the precious cargo. The capsule held billions of charged atoms — a total haul no bigger than a few grains of salt. The particles could explain how the sun formed 4.5 billion years ago and what keeps it fueled."