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by Maxx Damage
| A fireball streaks across the night sky disrupting a wintry night in Salt Lake City. The saucer-shaped object crashes in the snow covered salt flats of western Utah. From inside the crater, lights on the object can be seen pulsing in the dark. Has the alien invasion begun? No, it's just the return capsule from the NASA mission named Stardust. | ||
| Launched February 7, 1999, Project Stardust will send a spacecraft flying through the cloud of dust that surrounds the nucleus of the Comet Wild 2, on January 2, 2004 and for the first time bring cometary material back to Earth; back to Utah. Wild 2's original path took it out-side the orbit of Jupiter, but in 1974 the gas giant thrust the comet into a new orbit closer to the sun. The comet has spent most of its existence in an area that has been unchanged since the dawn of the solar system. It is thought to be a time capsule with which we can look back at the materials that were the solar system's building blocks. Scientists have long sought a sample directly from a known comet because of the unique chemical and physical information these bodies contain. It is also hoped that the particles will help in understanding the biological potential of other planets, since the same comets that were hitting Earth when it was forming were probably also hitting Mars and Venus.
As the spacecraft approaches the dust cloud it will flip open a tennis racket shaped particle catcher filled with a smoke-colored glass foam called Aerogel to capture the comet particles. Aerogel, developed 60 years ago, is three times denser than air and is sometimes called "Frozen Smoke". The low density of the material will hopefully provide enough give to slow and stop the particles without altering them.  After the particles have been collected, the capture device will fold down into a return capsule, which closes like a clamshell to contain the sample for its safe return to Earth. On January 15, 2006, a parachute will set the capsule gently onto the salt flats of Utah's desert for retrieval. An onboard radio beacon will guide the searchers. Hopefully after seven years in the incredibly cold temperatures of space and after being bombarded with particles the capsule and parachute will operate correctly. It is unknown what hazards if any these particles will pose. The samples collected will be extremely small, less than a micron, or 1/25,000th on an inch. They can only be adequately studied in laboratories with sophisticated analytical instruments. |
