[extropy-chat] Stardust update

[Amara Graps]

http://stardust.jpl.nasa.gov/news/status/040102.html

MEDIA RELATIONS OFFICE
JET PROPULSION LABORATORY
CALIFORNIA INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY
NATIONAL AERONAUTICS AND SPACE ADMINISTRATION
PASADENA, CALIF. 91109.  TELEPHONE (818) 354-5011
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov

DC Agle (818) 393-9011
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.

Donald Savage (202) 358-1547
NASA Headquarters, Washington, D.C.

News Release: 2004-001                         January 2, 2003




NASA Spacecraft Makes Great Catch...Heads for Touchdown

[Comet Wild 2 is shown in this image taken by the Stardust
navigation camera during the spacecraft's closest approach to the
comet on January 2. The image was taken within a distance of 500
kilometers (about 311 miles) of the comet's nucleus with a
10-millisecond exposure.]

Team Stardust, NASA's first dedicated sample return mission to a
comet, passed a huge milestone today by successfully navigating
through the particle and gas-laden coma around comet Wild 2
(pronounced "Vilt-2"). During the hazardous traverse, the
spacecraft flew within 240 kilometers (149 miles) of the comet,
catching samples of comet particles and scoring detailed pictures
of Wild 2's pockmarked surface.

"Things couldn't have worked better in a fairy tale," said Tom
Duxbury, Stardust project manager at NASA's Jet Propulsion
Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.

"These images are better than we had hoped for in our wildest
dreams," said Ray Newburn of JPL, a co-investigator for Stardust.
"They will help us better understand the mechanisms that drive
conditions on comets."

"These are the best pictures ever taken of a comet," said Principal
Investigator Dr. Don Brownlee of the University of Washington,
Seattle. "Although Stardust was designed to be a comet sample
return mission, the fantastic details shown in these images greatly
exceed our expectations."

The collected particles, stowed in a sample return capsule onboard
Stardust, will be returned to Earth for in-depth analysis. That
dramatic event will occur on January 15, 2006, when the capsule
makes a soft landing at the U.S. Air Force Utah Test and Training
Range. The microscopic particle samples of comet and interstellar
dust collected by Stardust will be taken to the planetary material
curatorial facility at NASA's Johnson Space Center, Houston, Texas,
for analysis.

Stardust has traveled about 3.22 billion kilometers (2 billion
miles) since its launch on February 7, 1999. As it closed the final
gap with its cometary quarry, it endured a bombardment of particles
surrounding the nucleus of comet Wild 2. To protect Stardust against
the blast of expected cometary particles and rocks, the spacecraft
rotated so it was flying in the shadow of its "Whipple Shields." The
shields are named for American astronomer Dr. Fred L. Whipple, who,
in the 1950s, came up with the idea of shielding spacecraft from
high-speed collisions with the bits and pieces ejected from comets.
The system includes two bumpers at the front of the spacecraft --
which protect Stardust's solar panels -- and another shield
protecting the main spacecraft body. Each shield is built around
composite panels designed to disperse particles as they impact,
augmented by blankets of a ceramic cloth called Nextel that further
dissipate and spread particle debris.

"Everything occurred pretty much to the minute," said Duxbury. "And
with our cometary encounter complete, we invite everybody to tune
in about one million, 71 thousand minutes from now when Stardust
returns to Earth, bringing with it the first comet samples in the
history of space exploration."

Scientists believe in-depth terrestrial analysis of the samples
will reveal much about comets and the earliest history of the solar
system. Chemical and physical information locked within the
cometary particles could be the record of the formation of the
planets and the materials from which they were made. More
information on the Stardust mission is available at

http://stardust.jpl.nasa.gov .

Stardust, a part of NASA's Discovery Program of low-cost, highly
focused science missions, was built by Lockheed Martin Space
Systems, Denver, Colo., and is managed by JPL for NASA's Office of
Space Science, Washington, D.C. JPL is a division of the California
Institute of Technology in Pasadena.
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Amara Graps, PhD          email: amara at amara.com
Computational Physics     vita:  ftp://ftp.amara.com/pub/resume.txt
Multiplex Answers         URL:   http://www.amara.com/
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"We don't see things as they are, we see them as we are." --Anais Nin