[meteorite-list] Stardust Team Prepares for Return of Science Canister

From: Ron Baalke <baalke_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Thu Oct 20 17:49:44 2005
Message-ID: <200510202148.j9KLmOQ20333_at_zagami.jpl.nasa.gov>

http://www1.jsc.nasa.gov/jscfeatures/articles/000000431.html

Bill Jeffs
Johnson Space Center, Houston
(281) 483-5111

Stardust team prepares for return of science canister
October 13, 2005

It was just a simulation but the enthusiasm and anticipation were
clearly evident on the faces of all involved.

NASA's Stardust spacecraft, which collected particles from comet Wild 2
in January 2004, will complete its two-year, 708-million-mile trek back
to Earth this January. The capsule will be transported to Johnson Space
Center and stored in the Stardust Laboratory. The samples will be stored
in the Stardust Laboratory and distributed to scientists who will make
the first analyses of these particles.

Stardust recovery and science team members met at JSC the week of Oct.
3-7 to rehearse the steps that will be involved in recovering the
samples from the Stardust capsule in January. A canister was transported
to JSC and placed in the Stardust clean room. There scientists removed
the Stardust sample trays and rehearsed techniques they will use to
document, process and analyze the cometary and interstellar particles.

"The spacecraft recovery team and the mission science team were at JSC
all week to shake down procedures for opening the sample canister and
harvesting and analyzing the captured samples," said Mike Zolensky,
Stardust co-investigator and NASA space scientist in JSC's
Astromaterials Research and Exploration Science Directorate.

Once the Sample Return Capsule is recovered at the Utah Test and
Training Range on Jan. 15, its contents will be placed in the capable
hands of the Stardust Curation Team based at JSC. This team will then go
about the business of carefully transporting the aerogel containing
grains from comet Wild 2 and interstellar dust to the Stardust Lab at
JSC for examination.

The samples gathered by Stardust are expected to consist of about 1,000
cometary dust particles and an additional 100 interstellar dust grains.
The expected total mass of the sample will probably be one milligram,
less than a thimbleful.

The JSC team has developed exacting techniques for the removal and
analysis of captured grains from the silica aerogel used as a capture
medium. They will continue to improve and practice these techniques
before the comet samples are placed into their hands in 2006. The
rehearsal this month provided yet another opportunity to perfect these
techniques.

The samples may help scientists better understand the nature of comets
and their role in the early history of the solar system. Scientists are
eager to have samples in a lab to examine.

"Nothing beats getting a piece of sample," said Peter Tsou, deputy
principal investigator for the Stardust mission, NASA Jet Propulsion
Lab. "A lot of secrets are locked into the microstructure at almost the
atom level. So you can only analyze them when you get individual
particles."

There are 180 investigators worldwide who will be involved in the
preliminary examination of the returned Stardust samples.

"Some scientific results will come out almost immediately," said Donald
Brownlee, principal investigator for the Stardust mission and professor
of astronomy at the University of Washington. "The first time you look
at something under a microscope you can see details that you didn't know
about before. Other things will obviously take years. But we expect to
get a significant science return within the first couple months of
scientific investigation."

Tsou and Brownlee were at JSC for the rehearsal. They were joined by
other Stardust science team members, Lockheed Martin Space Systems
personnel, members of JSC's astromaterials curation staff, ARES
scientists and others.

The Stardust spacecraft was launched in February 1999. It encountered
its target, comet Wild 2, on Jan. 2, 2004. In addition to capturing
samples of cometary material for return to Earth, Stardust collected
grains from a stream of particles from interstellar space. The
spacecraft will release a capsule containing the sample particles for
landing at the Air Force's Utah Test and Training Range on Jan. 15.

Stardust, a part of NASA's Discovery Program of low-cost, highly focused
science missions, was built by Lockheed Martin Space Systems of Denver
and is managed by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory at Pasadena, Calif.,
for NASA's Science Mission Directorate in Washington.

For more information on the Stardust mission,
visit:http://stardust.jpl.nasa.gov/

For more information on the JSC Stardust Curation Team,
visit:http://www-curator.jsc.nasa.gov/curator/stardust
Received on Thu 20 Oct 2005 05:48:24 PM PDT