Stardust - NASA's Comet Sample Return Mission

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Dr. Donald Brownlee, Stardust Principal Investigator

Stardust Science Update
The 2007 round of sample processing and allocations of Cosmic Dust has been completed. The Cosmic Dust Lab (CDL) at Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas, will be closed down and cleaned in order to resume work associated with processing of the Interstellar Tray from Stardust.

Stardust's Big Surprise
The comet particles returned by the Stardust mission have been a real bonanza. They do contain some stardust grains from other stars but the majority of solids are solar system materials that appear to have formed over a very broad range of solar distances and perhaps over an extended time range.

A researcher examining a Stardust aerogel tile under a stereo microscope.

NASA Study Finds New Kind of Organics in Stardust Mission
A team of scientists found a new class of organics in comet dust captured from comet Wild 2 in 2004 by NASA's Stardust spacecraft.

Stardust Findings Suggest Comets More Complex Than Thought
Comets may be more than just simple conglomerations of ice, dust and gases. Scientists have found a wide range of compositions and structures for the comet Wild 2 particles that were captured and returned to Earth by NASA's Stardust spacecraft.

Aerogel: Catching Comet Dust
The primary objective of the Stardust mission is to capture both cometary samples and interstellar dust. Main challenges to accomplishing this successfully involve slowing down the particles from their high velocity with minimal heating or other effects that would cause their physical alteration.

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