This is the Hayabusa spacecraft's fiery plunge into Earth's atmosphere. The Japanese spacecraft completed its seven-year, 1.25 billion mile journey to return a sample of an asteroid called Itokawa.

The video was captured by a team aboard NASA's DC-8 airborne laboratory. It was packed with cameras and other imaging instruments, to capture the high-speed re-entry over an unpopulated area of central Australia on June 13, 2010.

Makes you wonder doesn't it - it took seven years to go to the comet and back.