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

Scientists have been peering inside the capsule with flashlights and mirrors, finding intact parts. Some 350 palm-sized wafers make up five disks that were open to solar wind during the mission, collecting atoms from the sun.

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

The probe crashed on re-entry in the Utah desert Wednesday after its parachutes failed to open, after a three-year mission which scientists hoped would yield clues about the origin of the solar system.

The canister was taken to a cleanroom at the US Army Dugway Proving Ground in Utah near the site where the returning space probe crashed.

Ultimately the solar samples will be taken to the Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas, for study and preservation.

Genesis gathered 10 to 20 micrograms of bits of solar wind during its three-year mission, the first cosmic materials ever returned to Earth from beyond the Moon.

Scientists had hoped the microscopic particles from the solar wind would help them understand how the sun and planets were formed.

The capsule careered into the ground at 310 kilometers (193 miles) per hour, hurtling past helicopters that had planned to grab it in midair.

NASA television images showed the saucer-like capsule's dramatic tumble as it twirled rapidly toward the western state's desert.

The capsule struck the Earth so hard that half of it was lodged the in the ground, where it was stuck at a 10-degree angle.

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