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NASA's Stardust spacecraft returned new images of a comet showing a scar resulting from the 2005 Deep Impact mission. The images also showed the comet has a fragile and weak nucleus. The spacecraft made its closest approach to comet Tempel 1 on Monday, Feb. 14, at 8:40 p.m. PST (11:40 p.m. EST) at a distance of approximately 178 kilometers (111 miles). Stardust took 72 high-resolution images of the comet. It also accumulated 468 kilobytes of data about the dust in its coma, the cloud that is a comet's atmosphere. The craft is on its second mission of exploration called Stardust-NExT,...

Shortly after closest approach, Stardust turned its antenna toward Earth to begin the downlink. The playback was delayed an hour due to inclement weather at a ground station in Spain. When the close-up images didn't show up as planned, project leaders were seen pacing around mission control or huddling in groups to troubleshoot. Space enthusiasts who stayed up all night watching the coverage streamed over the Internet by NASA grew weary and signed off from Twitter and other social networking sites after failing to get an up-close peek.

PASADENA, Calif. -- NASA will host several live media activities for the Stardust-NExT mission's close encounter with comet Tempel 1. The closest approach is expected at approximately 8:37 p.m. PST, with confirmation received on Earth at about 8:56 p.m. PST on Monday, Feb. 14. Live coverage of the Tempel 1 encounter will begin at 8:30 p.m. Feb. 14 on NASA Television and the agency's website. The coverage will include live commentary from mission control at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, Calif., and video from Lockheed Martin Space System's mission support area in Denver. A news briefing is planned...

During the encounter, Stardust will take dozens of high-resolution images of Tempel 1′s nucleus and coma, a fuzzy halo of gas and dust. It will also use its two dust detectors to measure the size and makeup of dust grains. The spacecraft is equipped with a protective shield to deflect potentially dangerous particles as it zips past.

The duo will make new observations of comets and characterize extrasolar planets. Stardust and Deep Impact will use their flight-proven hardware to perform new, previously unplanned, investigations... The EPOXI mission melds two compelling science investigations -- the Deep Impact Extended Investigation (DIXI) and the Extrasolar Planet Observation and Characterization (EPOCh). Both investigations will be performed using the Deep Impact spacecraft, which finished its prime mission in 2005... EPOCh's sensitivity will exceed both current ground and space-based observatory capabilities. EPOCh also will measure the mid-infrared spectrum of the Earth, providing comparative data for future efforts to study the atmospheres of extrasolar...

LOS ANGELES - NASA said Tuesday it is recycling two used spacecraft to lead new robotic missions to study comets and planets around other stars. The encore performances of the Deep Impact and Stardust probes allow the space agency to further its solar system exploration for a fraction of the cost it would take to start a mission from scratch. Both spacecraft successfully completed their primary missions to two different comets and their discoveries have helped scientists understand how the solar system formed. In 2005, Deep Impact released a copper impactor that smashed into comet Tempel 1. The collision carved...

Close window Published online: 10 April 2007; | doi:10.1038/news070409-5 Stardust samples genuine, researchers sayFears of contamination in comet collection may be overblown.Katharine Sanderson A comet's tale: minerals trapped by the Stardust mission brought some surprises. JPL / NASA Recent media reports that certain comet samples returned by the Stardust mission may simply be contamination have been overblown, say researchers. In a paper to be published in the journal Energy and Fuels, astrobiologists in Spain suggest that some minerals returned by the Stardust mission might have been caused by a reaction between the rocket's fuel and the fuel tank1. The...

LAS VEGAS --From Stardust to just dust. The Las Vegas Strip's first mass-market casino-hotel was imploded early Tuesday in a hail of fireworks to make way for Boyd Gaming Corp.'s $4.4 billion megaresort Echelon. Hundreds of people partied beneath tents and on makeshift patios before Boyd chairman Bill Boyd's four grandsons pushed a plunger to detonate the former Stardust casino. The blast generated a massive dust cloud that chased the revelers into cars, buses and nearby casinos.

SAN FRANCISCO - Detailed observations from the first comet samples returned to Earth are debunking some of science's long-held beliefs on how the icy, celestial bodies form. Scientists expected the minute grains retrieved from a comet Wild 2 to be made up mostly of interstellar dust — tiny particles that flow through the solar system thought to be from ancient stars that exploded and died. Instead, they found an unusual mix of primordial material as if the solar system had turned itself inside out. Hot particles from the inner solar system migrated out to the cold, outer fringes beyond Pluto...

SPACE CENTER, Houston – NASA scientists have a new mystery to solve: How did materials formed by fire end up on the outermost reaches of the solar system, where temperatures are the coldest? The materials were contained in dust samples captured when the robotic Stardust spacecraft flew past the comet Wild 2 in 2004. A 100-pound capsule tied to a parachute returned the samples to Earth in January. The samples include minerals such as anorthite, which is made up of calcium, sodium, aluminum and silicate; and diopside, made of calcium magnesium and silicate. Such minerals only form in very high...

ST. LOUIS - Scientists said Monday they have begun slicing and dicing the first of hundreds of microscopic specks of comet dust, virtually unchanged since the birth of the solar system, that a NASA spacecraft successfully returned to Earth in late January. Preliminary analysis shows the dust, captured when the robotic Stardust spacecraft flew past the comet Wild 2 in January 2004, is unmistakably cometary in origin, said Don Brownlee, a University of Washington astronomer who is the principal scientist for the $212 million mission. As such, the grains represent pristine samples of the primitive material that came together to...

The Stardust mission to bring back samples of comet and interstellar dust was more successful than they had hoped, scientists said yesterday. The 100-pound sample container from the seven-year mission, which landed on the salt flats of Utah on Sunday, captured thousands of particles, perhaps even a million, that originated at the edge of the solar system or from distant stars, they said. While they had expected mostly microscopic samples, the researchers said, a surprising number of the particles were large enough to be seen with the naked eye. "It exceeded all of our grandest expectations," Donald Brownlee of the...

SPACE CENTER, Houston (AP) - A honeycomb cluster of cells on NASA's Stardust spacecraft captured thousands of samples of interstellar and comet dust that scientists said Thursday could give them the first definitive evidence about how the solar system formed. "Its cargo was an ancient, cosmic treasure from the very edge of the solar system - a treasure that formed when the solar system formed 4.5 billion years ago," said Donald Brownlee, a University of Washington scientist who worked on the Stardust mission managed by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. Some of the samples collected during the seven-year,...

HOUSTON -- Humanity got its first close-up look at particles from a comet this morning, as thrilled scientists unveiled images of the microscopic grains at a NASA press conference. One image showed what appeared to be Pinocchio's nose -- a long, dark trail left by a particle as it rammed faster than a rifle bullet through a super-lightweight material designed to capture it inside the Stardust space capsule. The unevenly shaped particle, which resembled a badly burned piece of popcorn, sat at the end of the "nose." Animated scientists unveiled this and other images of cometary particles at a NASA...

DUGWAY PROVING GROUND, Utah — A space capsule carrying comet dust made a near-perfect landing in the Utah desert early Sunday. The Stardust capsule streaked across the sky at about 2 a.m., blazing yellow-orange and trailing an iridescent wake as it plunged into the atmosphere. "It looked like a magic wand," said a jubilant Don Brownlee, the University of Washington astronomer who led the seven-year, $212 million mission to collect and study the primordial building blocks of the solar system. An impending snowstorm had threatened to blot out the spectacle and complicate retrieval of the capsule, but a brief window...

DUGWAY PROVING GROUND, Utah - A space capsule ferrying the first comet dust samples to Earth parachuted onto a remote stretch of desert before dawn Sunday, drawing cheers from elated scientists. The touchdown capped a seven-year journey by NASA's Stardust spacecraft, which zipped past a comet in 2004 to capture minute dust particles and store them in the capsule. "It's an absolutely fantastic end to the mission," said Carlton Allen, a scientist with NASA's Johnson Space Center. A helicopter recovery team located the capsule Sunday and was transferring it to a clean room at the nearby Michael Army Air Field....

The Stardust capsule will be visible from parts of Nevada, Utah, California, Idaho and Oregon when it returns on Jan 15 at 1:57 AM PST (09:57 UTC). Tips on how to observe this event are available.

TOOELE, Utah - The last time NASA scientists hunkered down at a Utah Army base, they stared wide-eyed as a space probe carrying solar wind atoms crashed into the salt flats and split open like a giant clamshell. Flash forward two years. Nerves are on edge as scientists anxiously await the return of another space probe — this one named Stardust and bearing the first comet samples ever carried to Earth. It is scheduled to make a pre-dawn landing at the Army's remote Dugway Proving Ground on Sunday. Memories of the ill-fated 2004 Genesis landing, in which the space probe's...

BERKELEY -- Astronomy buffs who jumped at the chance to use their home computers in the SETI@home search for intelligent life in the universe will soon be able to join an Internet-based search for dust grains originating from stars millions of light years away. In a new project called Stardust@home, University of California, Berkeley, researchers will invite Internet users to help them search for a few dozen submicroscopic grains of interstellar dust captured by NASA's Stardust spacecraft and due to return to Earth in January 2006. Though Stardust's main mission was to capture dust from the tail of comet Wild...

Washington - NASA is looking for volunteers to spend about 30,000 hours looking at minuscule particles on a web-based microscope to identify traces of interstellar dust collected by the 'Stardust' spacecraft, expected to return to Earth on Sunday. The National Aeronautics and Space Administration said Tuesday it would enlist an army of internet volunteers to help in the meticulous search for rare grains of 'submicroscopic dust' that was collected along with larger grains of dust from the comet Wild 2 during the probe's seven-year, 4.5 billion kilometre journey. The reward for discoverers will be the privilege of naming the dust...