Slashdot Mirror
Stardust to Return January 15
accessdeniednsp writes "Seven years ago, the Stardust probe was sent to intercept Comet Wild 2, gather dust particles, and return to Earth. Stardust is scheduled to touch down in a Utah desert on January 15. From the article: 'Our mission is called Stardust, in part because we believe some of the particles in the comet will, in fact, be older than the sun,' said Don Brownlee of the University of Washington, the principal investigator of the mission."
No kidding...especially since they were built by the same contractor (Lockheed Martin Denver).
The failure of Genesis was tied to a badly designed placement of deceleration sensors, a design flaw which Stardust is apparently free from (but I'm sure there will still be some serious hand-wringing on the 15th).
More details here.
Worst...sig...ever!
http://curious.astro.cornell.edu/question.php?num
Whenever the offence inspires less horror than the punishment, the rigour of penal law is obliged to give way...
NASA/JPL requirements for an earth entry vehicle thats returning any kind of sample are very strict. They require that there be less than a 10^-6 chance of a particle larger than 2 nanometers entering the earth atmosphere.
Those NASA administrators read Crichton too.
You're absolutely right. Your suggestion is silly.
A life form which evolved to survive on the surface of a comet has zero chance of being successful inside the human body. In order for a life form to evolve to be effective in an environment, it must have exposure to that environment. The viruses which already plague us here on Earth have spent billions of years evolving specifically to attack the other life forms already present on Earth.
Of course, this argument is strongly rooted in evolution. As some other posters have pointed out, if you believe in intelligent design, you might disagree. But then, real-life observations and evidence are overwhelmingly consistent with evolution, not intelligent design, so I think we're safe.