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Planetary News: Stardust (2006)Stardust Scientists Thrilled at First View of Returned SamplesBy Amir Alexander18 January, 2006 The Stardust sample return canister, which landed in the Utah desert on January 15, was opened yesterday in a clean room at the Johnson Space Center in Houston. The canister contains the aerogel plates, which collected cometary and interstellar dust particles during Stardust's 7-year voyage through the solar system. They are the first samples returned from space to Earth in more than 30 years. On one side of the collector are embedded dust particles picked up from comet Wild 2 during Stardust's dramatic flight through the cloud of gas and debris surrounding the comet on January 2, 2004. On the other side are embedded minute grains of interstellar dust, particles from distant stars that found their way to our solar system. These were collected during Stardust's passage through a stream of interstellar dust particles on its way to Wild 2. Scientists in the clean room were thrilled when the capsule was first opened, revealing the interstellar dust side of the collector. "This is Fantastic" said Andrew Westphal of the Space Sciences Laboratory at U.C. Berkeley, member of the Stardust mission team and leader of the Stardust@home project. "The aerogel seems to be in great shape and no tiles are missing" he said, observing that the cracking in the aerogel seemed to be minimal. The good condition of the aerogel is particularly important for Stardust@home, a project in which volunteers will search for as few as 40 miniscule interstellar dust particles among the cracks and flaws in the aerogel.
The interstellar dust side of the collector also showed signs of two particles from Wild 2 that impacted with such force that they shot clean through the cometary side of the collector and into the interstellar dust side. This was a promising sign for what would be found on the opposite side of the collector, and to these the scientists now turned. Unlike the few and microscopic interstellar dust particles, the grains from Wild 2 vary in size and some can actually be seen with the naked eye. Also, there are a lot more of them -- possibly more than a million. Each particle captured by the collector leaves a carrot-shaped tunnel in the collector, at the end of which can be found the particle itself. "It exceeds all expectations" said Donald Brownlee of the University of Washington, Principal Investigator of the Stardust mission, when the cometary side of the collector was revealed. "We can see lots of impacts -- there are big ones, there are small ones." One track, he added, was almost large enough to put a finger through. Overall, he said, "it's a huge success." Once the aerogel is removed from the collector, scientists will begin to systematically locate and extract the particles from the aerogel before sending them to expectant researchers around the world. For the interstellar dust particles, this process will be conducted by Stardust@home, a project that recruits computer users from around the world to search for the minute dust grains embedded in the aerogel.
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