[meteorite-list] Stardust Parachutes to Soft Landing in Utah with Dust Samples from Comet

[Ron Baalke]

Office of News and Information
University of Washington
Seattle, Washington

CONTACT:
Vince Stricherz, 206-543-2580

Jan. 15, 2006

Stardust parachutes to soft landing in Utah with dust samples from comet

DUGWAY, Utah -- Nearly seven years after setting off in pursuit of comet 
Wild 2, the Stardust return capsule streaked across the night sky of the 
Western United States early today, making a soft parachute landing in the 
Utah desert southwest of Salt Lake City.

Special helicopter-borne teams secured and recovered the capsule, 
containing tens of thousands of comet grains and as many as 100 bits of 
interstellar dust, shortly after it landed. The capsule was moved to a 
clean room at the Dugway Proving Ground, where a canister containing the 
collector grid was to be extracted and shipped to the Johnson Space Center 
in Houston later this week.

Donald Brownlee, a University of Washington astronomy professor who is 
Stardust's principal investigator, or lead scientist, believes the comet 
dust carries evidence, preserved in the deep-freeze of deep space, about 
how the sun and the solar system formed more than 4 billion years ago.

"What's really exciting to me is that we soon expect to have this cosmic 
library in the laboratory so that we can try to read those records of our 
earliest history," Brownlee said. "Our seven-year journey actually went 
back in time 4.5 billion years to gather these primitive samples."

Stardust, launched by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration 
from Cape Canaveral, Fla., on Feb. 7, 1999, encountered Wild 2 (pronounced 
Vilt 2) on Jan. 2, 2004, beyond the orbit of Mars. It flew less than 150 
miles from the comet's nucleus to capture tiny grains of dust and snap 
close-up photographs of the comet's main body. Though the grains were 
traveling faster than rifle bullets, they were not appreciably altered 
because the spacecraft's collector used a remarkable substance called 
aerogel that is as much as 99.9 percent empty space. The aerogel, Brownlee 
said, greatly reduced the effects of impact. The collector's reverse side 
was used to capture bits of interstellar dust streaming into the solar 
system from other parts of the galaxy.

On its voyage, Stardust traveled 2.88 billion miles -- the equivalent of 
more than 1 million trips from Los Angeles to New York. The mission became 
a quest for Brownlee after Wild 2 had a close encounter with Jupiter in 
1974. The giant planet's gravitational tug deflected the comet away from 
its previous path that went beyond Uranus, and brought it to the inner 
solar system where it could be reached by a spacecraft such as Stardust. 
Other spacecraft have visited comets, but Stardust is the only one 
designed to bring comet dust samples back to Earth.

Brownlee noted that thousands of tons of microscopic comet particles 
blanket the Earth each year, but there is no way to pinpoint where they 
came from. Previously the only solid extraterrestrial samples for which a 
point of origin had been firmly established were moon rocks brought back 
during the Apollo era and meteorites that scientists know had to come from 
Mars. Now there will be samples of material from another known space body, 
and they can be compared with all the previously collected meteorites and 
bits of dust to see if there are similar origins.

Once the canister arrives in Houston, it will be opened and work will 
begin extracting the comet and interstellar grains from the aerogel 
collector grid. The material will be parceled out to laboratories around 
the world for a variety of studies and experiments. One irony is that the 
microscopically tiny particles will be studied with some of the largest 
instruments.

"There's a whole variety of scientific instruments, and people all over 
the world are going to be investigating using the very best possible 
tools," Brownlee said. "They will use electron microscopes, mass 
spectrometers and even nuclear accelerators. The largest instrument to be 
used that I know is Stanford University's linear accelerator, which is 2 
miles long."

Stardust is part of NASA's series of Discovery missions and is managed by 
the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. Besides the UW, other 
major partners for the $212 million project are Lockheed Martin Space 
Systems; The Boeing Co.; Germany's Max-Planck Institute for 
Extraterrestrial Physics; NASA Ames Research Center; the University of 
Chicago; The Open University in England; and Johnson Space Center in 
Houston.

Brownlee likened the mission to some of the great seafaring adventures in 
human history.

"A lot of great explorers didn't make it back," he said. "This is the 
longest return voyage. Nothing has ever gone this far away and come back.

"In a very real sense, it is a great gift to be given the chance to do 
something like this."

Stardust on the Web,

     http://stardust.jpl.nasa.gov
     http://www.nasa.gov/stardust

For more information, contact Brownlee at (818) 726-5563 / (206) 543-8575.

IMAGE CAPTIONS:

[Image 1:
http://www.uwnews.org/photos.asp?articleID=21858&spid=21861]
Donald Brownlee stands by the clean room where the Stardust sample return 
capsule is being prepared to ship comet samples to Johnson Space Center in 
Houston. (University of Washington/Vince Stricherz)

[Image 2:
http://www.uwnews.org/photos.asp?articleID=21858&spid=21859]
The Stardust spacecraft snapped this close-up image of the nucleus of 
comet Wild 2 during its flyby in January 2004. (Jet Propulsion Laboratory)

[Image 3:
http://www.uwnews.org/photos.asp?articleID=21858&spid=21860]
Donald Brownlee in his University of Washington laboratory. (University of 
Washington/Mary Levin)

[Image 4:
http://www.uwnews.org/photos.asp?articleID=21858&spid=21862]
The bottom portion of the Stardust sample return capsule contains the 
aerogel collector with comet particles, beneath the exposed electronics. 
(University of Washington/Vince Stricherz)