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Stardust Probe Enters Comet's Tail Tomorrow
Tortured Potato writes "NASA's Stardust probe is about to pass through the tail of Comet Wild 2 at 11:40am PST, January 2nd. If all goes well, the probe will return the material to earth for research in 2006-- the first extraterrestrial material captured from outside the moon's orbit."
It will allows us to better study the properties of intersolar and pansolar materials in high-velocity space bodies. We'll be able to gain insights into the likely composition of planets which are too far away to analyse directly, and if this works we can confirm whether or not it is actually a 'vapor' trail or some other substance. There are other, lesser implications for space travel also, but that's about the gist of it.
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Andromeda wasn't a virus. It had no nucleotides or amino acids. It used crystalline structures to compartmentalize its metabolism. And it wasn't a bad movie. It was quite good if maybe too cerebral for some.
I was on a NASA committee involved in the predesign stages of the Stardust probe (we weren't designing it ourselves, rather we were consulting with one of the teams at the JPL who were) and this comet dust was one of our main points of focus. You'd think of dust as about the most innocuous stuff there is, but it was quite a challenge designing all the intricate mechanisms on the craft to be resistant to it - at the speed it travels, it can be like sandpaper on all the components.
It wasn't a bad move. It wasn't a virus. It didn't almost escape. It totally escaped. Not from a containment lab, but when a small-town doctor decided to crack open the probe. And it wasn't far-fetched.
Other than everything you said, you are correct.
December 31, 2003: Philosophers have long sought to "see a world in a grain of sand," as William Blake famously put it. Now scientists are attempting to see the solar system in a grain of dust--comet dust, that is.
If successful, NASA's Stardust probe will be the first ever to carry matter from a comet back to Earth for examination by scientists. It would also be the first time that any material has been deliberately returned to Earth from deep space.
And one wouldn't merely wax poetic to say that in those tiny grains of comet dust, one could find clues to the origin of our world and perhaps to the beginning of life itself.
Comets are like frozen time capsules from the time when our solar system formed. Drifting in the cold outer solar system for billions of years, these asteroid-sized "dirty snowballs" have undergone little change relative to the more dynamic planets. Looking at comets is a bit like studying the bowl of leftover batter to understand how a wedding cake came to be.
Indeed, evidence suggests that comets may have played a role in the emergence of life on our planet. The steady bombardment of the young Earth by icy comets over millions of years brought some of the water that makes our brown planet blue. And comets contain complex carbon compounds that might be the building blocks for life.
Launched in 1999, Stardust will rendezvous with comet Wild 2 (pronounced "Vilt" after its Swiss discoverer) on January 2, 2004. A rendezvous with a comet is a little like a rendezvous with a Gatling gun on a foggy night. As Stardust plunges through the hazy clouds of gas surrounding Wild 2's core, dust grains will fly by the spacecraft at about 13,000 mph, or six times faster than a speeding bullet. The "eyes" of Stardust, an onboard camera, will peek out from the body of the craft through a periscope to avoid damage. A Whipple Shield--a stack of five sheets of carbon filament and ceramic cloths each spaced 2 inches apart--protects the rest of the spacecraft.
Stardust will use a material called aerogel to capture some of the fast-moving grains. Aerogel is a foam-like solid so tenuous that it's hardly even there: 99 percent of its volume is just air. The ethereal lightness of aerogel minimizes damage to the grains as they're caught. Mission planners hope to catch more than one thousand grains larger than 15 microns in the aerogel.
Wild 2 orbited the sun beyond Jupiter until 1974, when it was nudged by Jupiter's gravity into a Sun-approaching orbit--within reach of probes from Earth. Since then the comet has passed by the Sun only five times, so its ice and dust ought to be little altered by solar heating. Pristine dust from Wild 2 can tell us what the solar system was like before it was baked by 4.5 billion years of sunshine and radiation.
After the encounter, Stardust will loop around the Sun on a two-year journey back to Earth. In January 2006, home again, the spacecraft will eject the Sample Return Capsule (SRC), which looks like a miniature Apollo capsule. The SRC will parachute to Earth and, if all goes as planned, land in Utah where scientists will be waiting...
To see a world in a grain of sand
And a heaven in a wild flower
Hold infinity in the palm of your hand
And eternity in an hour
William Blake (from Auguries of Innocence, c.1800)
- Kaos games and encryption systems developer
The *real* problem with that analogy is that it is still widely variable...
6 times faster than a speeding bullet
Which bullet? a
I have something in common with Stephen Hawking...
There's a site that JPL maintains with information, but it's been tough for me to maintain a link to it because they keep reorganizing their file directories. As of the current nano-second, more information is available via the Stardust FAQ.
Also, if anyone would like to get their own name onto one of the next missions (or see if you're already included), here's where you can enter/search for your name aboard the Deep Impact probe, which is heading out to meet with a comet in 2005. Keep in mind though that January 2004 is the deadline for entering new names. For more info, check here for the Deep Impact fact sheet.
Elonka :)