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STARDUST: The STARDUST spacecraft was launched on February 7, 1999.
Stardust flew through the dust atmosphere of comet Wild 2 on January 2, 2004, imaged
the icy cometary nucleus, collected dust samples, and returned these samples to Earth in
January 2006. As well as capturing dust particles during the comet fly through, the low
density (aerogel) dust collectors trapped some of the dust particles that are present in
interplanetary space, and these too were brought back to Earth for laboratory analyses.
Stardust Science Instruments:
Imager, impact dust mass spectrometer, aerogel dust sample collector
The Stardust spacecraft was built by Lockheed Martin Astronautics under contract to the
NASA/Jet Propulsion Laboratory. The principal investigator is Dr. Don Brownlee,
University of Washington, and the project management is located at the Jet Propulsion
Laboratory.
Look here for additional information on the STARDUST mission:
http://stardust.jpl.nasa.gov
[Image of Stardust spacecraft near comet]
[Illustration of Peter Tsou and aerogel sample]
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