Stardust Space Capsule Arrives in Houston
Posted on: Tuesday, 17 January 2006, 18:43 CST
HOUSTON -- The newly returned Stardust space capsule arrived Tuesday at NASA's Johnson Space Center, where the space agency said scientists will unlock its internal canister and take a first peek at comet debris particles it was supposed to capture during a seven-year journey.
If the $212 million mission went as planned, it may have captured particles older than the sun that could provide clues to how the solar system formed.
Technicians at Utah's Dugway Proving Ground had readied the capsule Monday for its trip to Houston after it survived a fiery plunge through the atmosphere early Sunday. It bounced three times in soft mud before coming to rest on its side.
The landing chipped off a piece of the capsule's heat shield, meant to protect it as it re-enters Earth. But the capsule and its canister were in otherwise good shape, said Joe Vellinga of Lockheed Martin, which built the capsule.
Stardust's homecoming, possibly with the first comet particles ever captured in space, was a relief for NASA, whose Genesis space probe carrying solar wind particles crashed and split open in 2004 after its parachutes failed to open. Despite the accident, scientists were able to salvage some of the fragile solar samples for analysis.
Stardust looped around the sun three times to capture interstellar dust.
In 2004, the spacecraft swooped past the comet Wild 2. Comets are frozen bodies of ice and dust that formed billions of years ago.
The spacecraft, which was launched in 1999, was designed to use a tennis racket-sized collector mitt to snatch the dust particles.
The Stardust capsule is believed to hold about a million tiny comet and interstellar dust particles. They are thought to be pristine leftovers from the formation of the solar system about 4.5 billion years ago.
Scientists will use microscopes to study the collected particles and determine what they are made of.
NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., managed the Stardust mission.
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On the Net:
Stardust Mission: http://stardust.jpl.nasa.gov/home/index.html
Source: By PAM EASTON/AP
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