Platinum has been playing its part in bringing back secrets from deep space despite the problems that appeared to strike the calamitous return of NASA's Genesis project.

Last week samples taken from space were aboard the Genesis return capsule that crashed into Utah, when a carefully planned retrieval mission went wrong.

The capsule approached earth at almost 200mph but failed to deploy its parachutes, instead slamming into the ground, threatening the contents inside.

However, several lead scientists say they have managed to recover useful information and samples from the wreckage despite fears that the project might be compromised.

UC Berkeley scientist Kunihiko Nishiizumi told the Daily Californian that the specially coated platinum foil used to collect atomic samples, had proved resilient in the face of the crash.

"Some newspapers say $264 million was lost, but that's not correct," said Nishiizumi. "The solar wind collectors are not in great condition compared to the original, but we can still do science."

Mr Nishiizumi, a Senior Space Fellow at the UC Berkeley Space Sciences Laboratory, who studies the nuclides beryllium-10, aluminum-26 and manganese-53 produced by the sun, said that the foil had yielded results, but would need to be decontaminated.

He estimates that his 8,000 square centimetres of platinum foil, which is also coated with molybdenum, captured around 800,000 atoms.