A former astronomy professor at Bern, Paul Wild, was the discoverer back in 1978 of the comet Wild 2. This was the one chosen as the target for Stardust, NASA's first mission to investigate comets. The probe, launched in 1999, flew through the comet's tail, and returned successfully to earth with dust samples in January 2006.

The comet turned out to be particularly interesting, as analysis of the dust show that it formed at high temperatures, near the sun or another star, rather than in the cold outer reaches of the solar system as was expected.