Stardust's trek ends; research just starting

The Seattle Times ^ | January 16, 2006 | Sandi Doughton

[neverdem]

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 in the skies opened up as if it were part of the elaborate plan behind Stardust's 2.9-billion-mile journey.

Brownlee dashed out of the control room to get a view of the fireball, but as soon as the glow faded he hurried back inside where NASA officials were tensely tracking the module. In 2004, a capsule containing solar-wind particles from the Genesis project crashed and broke apart on the same Army test range when its parachutes failed.

All eyes Sunday were glued to a blurry, infrared image of the plummeting craft. Right on schedule, the blob jerked upward — indicating its smaller parachute had opened.

"When we saw that ... we knew we were home safe," said project manager Tom Duxbury of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

The main chute opened a few minutes later and applause broke out in the Utah control room and JPL's primary command center in Pasadena, Calif.

Though the capsule was outfitted with a homing beacon, it took helicopter crews nearly an hour to locate it as high winds whipped the area.

A NASA video showed the first glimpse of the diminutive capsule, which measures less than 3 feet across: Illuminated by a powerful spotlight from a chopper hovering overhead, it looked like a top lying on its side.

The capsule appeared to have tumbled five times across the dried lake bed southwest of Salt Lake City, said Joe Vellinga, of Lockheed Martin Space Systems in Denver, which built the spacecraft. Close-up views later showed the capsule was coated with dirt but otherwise appeared undamaged.

Tucked inside the capsule is a small canister that holds the treasure Brownlee and other astronomers have worked more than 25 years to obtain.

Comets are believed to be remnants from the formation of the solar system that have barely changed over the past 4.5 billion years.

The Stardust particles will rewrite the book on how the sun and planets formed, and could hold clues to the origin of life, Brownlee said.

One theory holds that comets seeded Earth with water, carbon molecules and nucleic acids, the basic building blocks of DNA.

"It is a giant mystery story to unravel," Brownlee said.

Stardust harvested its cargo of comet dust on Jan. 2, 2004, when it flew within 150 miles of a comet called Wild-2. As gas and dust spewed from the comet's surface, the spacecraft deployed a tennis-racket-shaped grid that trapped the particles in a lightweight solid called aerogel.

On Sunday, moon-suited workers extracted the comet-dust canister after the capsule landed. The canister will be flown to a specially designed clean room at Johnson Space Center in Houston, where Brownlee and others will get their first look inside Tuesday.

He expects to find thousands of mostly microscopic particles. To scientists equipped with tools that can carve slices from the tiniest specks of matter, that's an incredible bounty of raw material.

Stardust marks the first time an American space mission has brought back solid material from space since Apollo 17 retrieved 244 pounds of moon rocks in 1972. A Soviet lunar mission in 1976 brought back 6 ounces.

Like the moon rocks, Stardust samples will be distributed to researchers throughout the world. Even today, 30-year-old lunar samples are yielding new information, and Brownlee said he expects the comet dust will prove an equally lasting source of insight and wonder.

But he hopes it won't take another 30 years for mankind to reach out again to space and bring bits of it home.

"We've shown that you can return samples to Earth without breaking the bank."

Sandi Doughton: 206-464-2491; sdoughton@seattletimes.com

[neverdem]

An incredible journey

Facts about the capsule

• The capsule was traveling 28,860 mph when it entered the atmosphere, the fastest of any re-entry vehicle.

• The capsule's temperature reached 4,900 degrees Fahrenheit during re-entry — twice as hot as lava from Hawaii's Mauna Kea volcano.

• Stardust's roundtrip of 2.9 billion miles is the longest for any spacecraft that has returned to Earth.

• The mission tested a new type of heat shield, which worked so well that some of the original paint survived the plunge through the atmosphere.

• Weighing 850 pounds at launch, the spacecraft body is smaller than a refrigerator.

• The Stardust body was boosted into solar orbit after it released the capsule. NASA says it could be used again to photograph another comet, though it can't be used to collect any more particles.

Source: NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory

NASA
The Stardust capsule, which measures less than 3 feet across, tumbled across a dried Utah lake bed after touching down early Sunday morning but appeared undamaged.

DOUGLAS C. PIZAC / AP
Ron Ceeders, a Lockheed Martin technician, unbolts a canister containing comet dust from the Stardust capsule in a clean room at Dugway Proving Ground, Utah, on Sunday. Dirt from the desert landing site cakes the exterior of the capsule.

NASA/AMES RESEARCH CENTER
"It looked like a magic wand" is how University of Washington astronomer Don Brownlee described the Stardust capsule's re-entry, seen here from NASA's DC-8 Airborne Laboratory.

[Para-Ord.45]

For 212 million bucks there`d better be a tiny green

bonhomme in there, not just dirt.

[Yo-Yo]

The capsule appeared to have tumbled five times across the dried lake bed southwest of Salt Lake City, said Joe Vellinga, of Lockheed Martin Space Systems in Denver, which built the spacecraft.

The first probe was supposed to be snagged in mid-air by it's parachute by the recovery helicoptors, but augered into the mud when the chute didn't deploy.

Wasn't this one supposed to be snagged in the same way, so as to not dislodge particles from the aerogel panels?

[D_Idaho]

Two words... Andromeda Strain.

[neverdem]

Wasn't this one supposed to be snagged in the same way, so as to not dislodge particles from the aerogel panels?

Not from what I've read. Airborne all the way!

[Waverunner]

oh no - not ---- The Green Slime
yes deep space goo grows out of control,
oops that was Senator Kennedy

[atomicpossum]

[Kokojmudd]

[RightWhale]

Good for Brownlee! The main question, if they actually trapped any particles, is whether they formed in free space or formed inside a planet that later got busted up somehow.

[Hot Tabasco]

$212 million mission to collect and study.....DUST

Heck they could have saved money and made money if they had sent that thing to my house. Plenty of space and dust to make even an alien sneeze.......

[neverdem]

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An update of epidemiologic studies of plutonium workers.

FReepmail me if you want on or off my health and science ping list.

[Moonman62]

Wasn't this one supposed to be snagged in the same way, so as to not dislodge particles from the aerogel panels?

Nope, the aerogel apparently is much sturdier than the collectors on the Genesis probe. However, the most important collector on the Genesis probe, called the concentrator actually suffered no damage. Some of the more sensitive collectors were pulverized to dust, though others are very usable and it's expected that 100% of the mission goals will be met. Not bad for a probe that was too delicate to land by parachute, yet slammed into the ground without one.

[PGalt]

Thanks for the ping, post, pics and information. Very interesting.

Hooray NASA!

[krakath]

If you guys want to be more involved in Stardust, check out this link: http://stardustathome.ssl.berkeley.edu/