The Andromeda Strain by Michael Crichton

"Relentlessly suspenseful...A hair-raising experience."
THE PITTSBURGH PRESS
The United States government stands warned that sterilization procedures for returning space probes may be inadequate to guarantee uncontaminated re-entry to the atmosphere. When a probe satellite falls to the earth two years later, and lands in a desolate area of northeastern Arizona, the bodies that lie heaped and flung across the ground, have faces locked in frozen surprise. The terror has begun....