Stardust's Comet-visiting adventures...

[Mike]

http://stardust.jpl.nasa.gov/photo/cometwild2.html

[Jim]

The Stardust project are looking for volunteers to scan picures on the web to look for grains of stardust.  Follow the link to register and for more info

http://stardustathome.ssl.berkeley.edu/prereg.html

[Sue]

Really exciting project! Will and I have signed up. Hope we can pass the test to be included to help.

[Mike]

A capsule containing comet particles and interstellar dust has landed on Earth after a seven-year space mission.

The Stardust probe released the capsule as it flew back to Earth after a 4.6-billion-km (2.8-billion-mile) trip.

The US-built capsule plunged through the atmosphere and touched down in the Utah desert at 0312 (1012 GMT).

Scientists believe the first cometary dust samples ever returned to Earth will shed light on the origins of the Solar System.

For the full story - http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/4614222.stm

[Rick]

The idea that comets delivered the chemical "seeds" for life to the early Earth has been given a big boost.

Scientists studying the tiny grains of material recovered from Comet Wild-2 by Nasa's Stardust mission have found large, complex carbon-rich molecules.

They are of the type that could have been important precursor components of the initial reactions that gave rise to the planet's biochemistry.

More: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/5173992.stm

Also: http://stardust.jpl.nasa.gov/home/index.html
and: http://stardust.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news109.html
and: http://stardust.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news108.html

[Rick]

NASA boffins say that they have identified an amino acid, one of the key building blocks of Earth-style life, in material recovered from a comet far out in space. They say this supports the idea that life may be commonly found throughout the universe, and that they have eliminated the chance that the cometary sample has been contaminated by Earthly life.

The sample in question was scooped from the comet Wild-2 in 2004 by the NASA space probe Stardust, which was launched a decade ago in 1999. Having made a close pass to the comet and picked up some of its substance, Stardust then dropped the sample capsule back to Earth in 2006. The main probe, remaining in space, is now to head out again to investigate the comet Tempel-1.

More: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/08/18/comet_glycine_life_sample/

[Mike]

Scientists may have identified the first specks of interstellar dust in material collected by the US space agency's Stardust spacecraft.

A stream of this dust flows through space; the tiny particles are building blocks that go into making stars and planets.

The Nasa spacecraft was primarily sent to catch dust streaming from Comet Wild 2 and return it to Earth for analysis.

But scientists also set out to capture particles of interstellar dust.

The material was gathered by the Stardust probe in a seven-year, 4.8-billion-km (2.9 billion miles) interplanetary voyage.

"So far this particle is unique... if we drop it on the floor, it will cost $300m to get another one."

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/8550924.stm

[Rick]

February 14, 2011 - PASADENA, Calif. -- As of today, Feb. 14, at 9:21 a.m. PST (12:21 p.m. EST), NASA's Stardust-NExT mission spacecraft is within a quarter-million miles (402,336 kilometers) of its quarry, comet Tempel 1, which it will fly by tonight. The spacecraft is cutting the distance with the comet at a rate of about 10.9 kilometers per second (6.77 miles per second or 24,000 mph).

The flyby of Tempel 1 will give scientists an opportunity to look for changes on the comet's surface since it was visited by NASA's Deep Impact spacecraft in July 2005. Since then, Tempel 1 has completed one orbit of the sun, and scientists are looking forward to discovering any differences in the comet.

The closest approach is expected tonight at approximately 8:40 p.m. PST (11:40 p.m. EST).

More: http://stardustnext.jpl.nasa.gov/mission/hours_from_encounter.html

[Rick]

...and there are a whole bunch of images here:

http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/stardust/multimedia/version1/index.html

[mickw]

These photos released by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., Tuesday, Feb. 15, 2011, shows an image from NASA's Stardust-NExT comet flyby mission of comet Tempel 1 taken Feb. 14, 2011. This pair of images shows the before-and-after comparison of the part of comet Tempel 1 that was hit by the impactor from NASA's Deep Impact spacecraft. The left-hand image is a composite made from images obtained by Deep Impact in July 2005. The right-hand image shows arrows identifying the rim of the crater caused by the impactor. The crater is estimated to be 150 meters (500 feet) in diameter. This image also shows a brighter mound in the center of the crater likely created when material from the impact fell back into the crater.
(AP Photo/ NASA/JPL/ Caltech/Cornell)



Here's a full size image of the comet to get some perspective -