Researchers have all but confirmed the interstellar origin of seven tiny space particles collected from NASA’s Stardust mission. Andrew Westphal of the Space Sciences Laboratory at the University of California, Berkeley says that one of the final steps is isotope analysis, but it’s a process that could also result in the loss of samples.

"So in order to measure the isotopic abundances, you have to take the particles apart one atom at a time. And at the moment, there are no techniques that you can do it any other way. And so, that’s why we have to be so careful. We will have one shot. These are so tiny. It would be trivially easy to lose them. And when we have so few of them-- the bar is high."

In the meantime, Westphal says that his team will be practicing on analogs – particles similar in size and property to the actual samples.

"We’re going to be doing a lot of practicing and just to make absolutely sure that we will not lose the real thing when we finally get to doing these measurements."