(CNN) -- After traveling five years and 2.3 billion miles, a speeding NASA space probe pounced on the shimmering tail of a comet Friday, and appeared to trap tiny space dust to bring back to Earth without losing contact with mission control.

At 2:44 p.m. ET today, the Stardust spacecraft reached its closest point with the massive chunk of ice and rock known as the Wild 2 Comet, getting within 200 miles at a relative speed of 13,645 mph, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration said.

At that point, the craft made a turn, pointing a camera at the nucleus of the comet and snapping pictures of the dark mass. The comet was also expected to stretch its robotic arm to trap comet dust in a tennis-racket-shaped catcher filled with a material called aerogel.

Everything appeared to go well, but it could take about 30 hours for the data to be beamed back to Earth confirming the collection of the space particles, NASA said.

"The signal is coming in and we've passed the closest approach point without any injury," said asteroid expert Don Yeomans, from NASA's Jet Propulsion Lab.

The hope is that the dust, which has been lingering in the cold of space for billions of years, could provide clues to how the universe formed -- including the stars, planets and even our solar system...

But the mission's biggest promise remains the return of the space particles to Earth. Researchers hope the unique chemical and physical information locked within the comet's dust samples, no bigger than a thumbnail, will teach them whether comets or interstellar dust provided the water or organic material necessary to form life.