Sun, Jan 04, 2004
NASA Says It Collected The Stuff We're All Made Of
The Stardust probe has
done what it was designed to do -- a fitting tribute to any
aircraft of spaceship. It went out to meet the comet Wild 2, made a
hair-raising near pass at almost 14,000 mph. Operating more than
242 million miles from Earth, Stardust came within 149 miles of
Wild 2 (pronounced Vilt 2), snapping photos like a mad tourist and
scooping up tiny particles of what could be the original cake mix
used to form the universe.
"We have successfully collected samples from a comet and we're
bringing them home," said Don Brownlee, of the University of
Washington, the mission's main scientist.
Stardust is the first of three cometary missions -- the other
two are slated for launch later this year. It will be only the
third robotic mission to retrieve samples from another cosmic body
and bring them home. The first was the Soviet Luna 24 mission to
the moon in 1976. The second is the Genesis spacecraft returns in
September. It went out looking for solar particles to capture, in
hopes of shedding light (no pun intended) on the origins of our
sun.
Stardust will pass by Earth two years from now, dropping off its
canister of comet dust.
There were a few tense moments as Stardust approached Wild 2. As
the comet-catcher snapped image after image (72 in all) during its
brief encounter with Wild 2, scientists spotted five jets of gas
emanating from the nucleus. Stardust flew through two of them. Of
course, by the time they were spotted, given the distance over
which the probe's transmissions had to travel to reach Earth, it
was old news.
"I'm glad we didn't know those were there. We would have been
terrified," Brownlee said.
First looks at the photos (only one had been released as ANN
went to publication) thrilled scientists at NASA's Jet Propulsion
Laboratory in Pasadena (CA). "These images are better than we had
hoped for in our wildest dreams," Ray Newburn, JPL investigator for
Stardust, said. "They will help us understand the mechanisms that
drive conditions on comets."
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