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Stardust Apparently Successful

Posted by michael on from the three-years-till-we-really-find-out dept.

Naomi_the_butterfly writes "The Stardust mission, a craft launched in February 1999, just concluded its encounter with comet Wild 2 at 11:40:35 am PST. The encounter went without a hitch, with about 72 images taken and comet coma (tail) dust collected! The first images will be downloaded to JPL over between 1:30 and 2:30 pm, in time for a press conference at 3:00 pm PST. Today a comet, tomorrow Mars!" Space.com has a picture taken by the spacecraft.

13 of 245 comments (clear)

  1. Today a comet, tomorrow Mars by larry+bagina · · Score: 2, Insightful
    Actually, yesterday mars. As in, the Europeans and the Beagle. Or the Japanase probe from a couple months ago.

    Landing a probe on Mars is easy. getting it to communicate after it's done so is not so easy.

    --
    Do you even lift?

    These aren't the 'roids you're looking for.

    1. Re:Today a comet, tomorrow Mars by jdhutchins · · Score: 3, Insightful

      A 'mothership' in orbit could take real-time video. The problem is the speed of light. It'd take the light at least 5min to get here, and then when we send something back, it'd take another 5min. So by the time we tell it "this way a little", it's already landed (the craft has landed, the question is where and how many pieces)

  2. Re:This has been done before by dreamchaser · · Score: 5, Insightful

    What is innovative? They are returning samples to Earth, the first time any automated probe has done that and the only material gathered direct from the source since the Moon landings!

    I think I just bit on a troll...

  3. Re:This has been done before by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful

    Probably that it's gone out, darted around the solar system, wandered into the path of the comet, nabbed some dust in aerogel... just some good solid engineering success there.

    The thing is coming BACK in 2 years, though. That seems to be the big feature.

  4. Re:This has been done before by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful

    The items you list have either not gone past earth's orbit, or have done so never to return, only sending information back.

    This one is physically coming back, bringing comet material back to earth.

    Maybe it's viruses or something, or weird alien spores that'll take over the planet, or maybe it's just some dirt and muck from a filthy iceball. Whatever it is, it's coming back here in January 2006. First Time Ever

  5. Re:This has been done before by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Sorry but I do think that these days, anything related to "space" and "success" is slashdot worthy ;-)

  6. Re:And NASA wonders why their funding gets cut... by wb8wsf · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Space exploration can be expensive. Thats the nature of the game.

    But the rewards from the information that little teaspoon of starstuff might contain, well, thats beyond measure. You can't put a price tag on how valuable that is.

  7. Re:And NASA wonders why their funding gets cut... by starfurynz · · Score: 2, Insightful

    And what would happen if it came back with bacteria on it? Wouldd you spin around and say it was money well spent?

    --
    We tend to become like the worst in those we oppose. --Bene Gesserit Coda--
  8. congratulations! by the+man+with+the+pla · · Score: 2, Insightful

    just wanted to say a quick congrats to all the hard working people at nasa. keep up the good work.

    --
    The linux hacker
  9. Did you ever stop to think about it? by HangingChad · · Score: 3, Insightful
    About what it takes to launch a spacecraft and guide it to a rendezvous with a chunk of ice billions of miles out in space and get it back again. Brilliant!

    I'm being serious. That's absolutely fucking amazing. How they know where the comet is going to be in space at a particular time and get another object going over 13,000 miles an hour to pass through its tail and snap pictures from a mere 200 miles away and all that by remote control when it takes an hour for instructions to get to the craft. Astounding. The shit we take for granted.

    --
    That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
  10. Re:Meanwhile, here on earth.... by Bill,+Shooter+of+Bul · · Score: 2, Insightful

    To correctly allocate resoucres is to know with 100% confidence the outcome of every possible allocation. How many people die of starvation while we try to solve aids? How many people die in car accidents when we try top solve cancer? Only with a godlike timeless perspective can you or anyone judgbe the allocation of resources and defintly state wheather we made good choices or bad. what if our investment in space technlology pays off big as we are able to divert an extinction causing comet from smashing into the planet.

    --
    Well.. maybe. Or Maybe not. But Definitely not sort of.
  11. Re:Meanwhile, here on earth.... by Zibblsnrt · · Score: 3, Insightful
    Thousands died while science looked to the stars.

    Something which, of course, would immediately stop if we'd just abandon all pretenses to advancement and go back to the trees, I suppose.

    Tens of thousands died in the industrialization process that got you probably just about everything in your home right now. I don't see you whining about how that wasn't worth it.

    To create the conditions that bolstered the technologies that are allowing you to post this myopic, Luddite bullshit on Slashdot right now, nearly one hundred million people died in no fewer than three major wars.

    What? From that mountaintop of a moral high ground you're preaching from, you couldn't see that?

    Maybe, just maybe, you should save your attempts at profundity for an occaision where they don't reek of ignorance.

    --
    "All that is necessary for evil to succeed is for good men to do nothing." - Edmund Burke
  12. To all those who say this mission was unnecessary by Naomi_the_butterfly · · Score: 4, Insightful
    This mission has gathered leftover dust that has been frozen inside a comet, held in the most pristine conditions, for billions of years. You and I are made of this stuff, dust from the explosions of nearby first generation stars (ours is a second or third). This is basically a way to look back in time to when our solar system was just forming.

    on another note, an article of mine got posted! woohoo!