IN A FIRST-OF-ITS-KIND mission for NASA, dust and rocks collected from an asteroid streaked through the Earth’s atmosphere in a capsule and landed in a military range in Utah on Sunday. As the capsule dashed through the sky, its surface was searing hot, but the sample inside was protected by a heat shield made in Silicon Valley’s NASA Ames Research Center.

According to Ethiraj Venkatapathy, chief technologist for the division that invents thermal protection systems, the heat shield is only a little more than 2 inches thick of a material that is lightweight enough to float on water.

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Prachi is a Dow Jones News Fund intern at Bay City News. She is a journalism graduate from University of Southern California. She previously worked at Annenberg Media as a Multimedia Journalist and the Managing Editor. Prachi has covered social justice, climate and human interest stories. She is interested in written and visual storytelling.