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."

Comments

Re:Here's hoping this one doesn't......

[cyclone96]

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.

Re:I know this is silly...

[heli0]

Probably not any more dangerous than the multiple tons of extraterrestrial debris that rains down on us every day.

http://curious.astro.cornell.edu/question.php?numb er=470

A study done in 1996 (looking at the number of meteorites found in deserts over time) calculated that for objects in the 10 gram to 1 kilogram size range, 2900-7300 kilograms per year hit Earth.

They also estimate between 36 and 166 meteorites larger than 10 grams fall to Earth per million square kilometers per year. Over the whole surface area of Earth, that translates to 18,000 to 84,000 meteorites bigger than 10 grams per year.

Re:I know this is silly...

[Nyeerrmm]

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.