The Mission: Designed to catch pieces of the sun itself, Genesis flew into space to collect solar winds in specially designed sheets of gold, diamond and sapphire. By studying actual pieces of the sun, scientists hoped to learn about the original composition of the solar system. The Problem: It wasn't the grabbing a piece of the sun that proved to be a problem, but the bringing it back. The satellite was too delicate to simply land, so NASA planned to catch the capsule in mid air by hooking its parachute with a helicopter. Except the parachute never deployed, and the satellite slammed into the Utah desert. Luckily, those wafers were built tough, and scientists managed to recover some of the samples for testing.

Courtesy of NASA