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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."
land like the last one.
Is it fascism yet?
The only way this could be a tad bit dangerous is if you happen to be a member of the Kansas educational board.
This article to return to the front page of Slashdot in a day or two.
GCHQ Quantum Insert installed. If only our tongues were made of glass, how much more careful we would be when we speak
The radiation from this capsule will transform anything near it..to..oh god, they're already here! SPACE ROBOTS!
"GO STAND BY SOME STAIRS"
Mod me down with all of your hatred and your journey towards the dark side will be complete!
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...
Stuff rains down on us from space all the time, including comets (at least where "all the time" is in geological terms). If there was something that could be alive on a comet that could harm us, something like it would have come down and killed us all by now.
Well, I believe his point was that it certainly can't be a virus. There's no way it could be compatible with any hosts, unless of course one subscribes to the Intelligent Design notion, in which case even though it has not evolved in this environment it could be compatible.
Comets Crashing into our small planet is one of our biggest long term threats. The samples will go a long way in being able to identify their composition and look at means to destroy them in future.
Although the likelyhood of asteroids hitting the earth are higher, comets are special in that they give very little warning before they hit. Maybe a few years, while asteroids can be predicted much earlier. A large comet hitting the earth, will likely be an ELE (Extinction Level Event), destroying most life and all humans.
To me, this is something that we doing for sustaining human life. I don't care about the money spent, or the small chance of bringing in viruses, which they may have already considered.
Life is just a conviction.
I can't believe I didn't get on either of the name list microchips on this probe. Poot!
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
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.
It depends greatly on a couple factors:
Coefficient of drag, surface area, mass of the object, and the density of the air it's falling in.
If you assume that the object can survive the freefall from space, then the air changes density enough that it would slow to the terminal velocity of the object at approximately sea level regardless of how fast it was going (within a reasonable orbital velocity)
So to summarize a bit, it'd be easily possible to design a rough-surfaced sphere that could slow to well under 100mph. Just think of a ping-pong ball or a beach ball!
Another variable is the entry angle. Genesis was *targeted* such that it would hit the edge of the earth's atmosphere and utilize it to bleed off almost all of its kinetic energy through friction. The parachutes were only designed to take care of braking it that last 200 mph or so.
Of course, they never deployed, so it essentially hit the ground at terminal velocity - basically the same as if you had just rolled it out of an aircraft at 50,000 feet.
Worst...sig...ever!
damn, i got all excited reading the headline. i thought my fav stripclub was going to reopen. oh well. btw, no need to mark your calender, you will be reminded here in a couple days.
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.
I was student of Don Brownlee at the University of Washington, and I think he's about the most decent and caring professor I've ever had. Even when I was an undergrad, I could go to his office and he'd just talk about his work for what seemed like hours, even to a lowly undergrad. I'm not saying this to name-drop -- I want people to know what a cool person he is. If anyone deserves success, it's Dr. Brownlee. Truly one of the good guys in science. He's one of those rare professors who managed to make himself famous (the guy has an asteroid named after him) while remaining humble and committed to helping his students learn. We need more scientists like him.
-1 Flaimbait? Wow! Mormons, sure are sensitive. At least I didn't say: My Xenu! It's full of Scientologists!
"You'll get nothing, and you'll like it!"
That's true-- and come to think of it, I'm not going to be anywhere near those lifeforms once they're taken off of the probe. Once they find out our atmosphere has been burning up their relatives, they're going to be PISSED.
I don't moderate anymore. Karma penalty for 90% fair mods? Can I mod that unfair?
Oh, you mean superatomic particles. Never mind.
"A great democracy must be progressive or it will soon cease to be a great democracy." --Theodore Roosevelt