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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 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...
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.
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!"