NASA capsule returns bearing comet dust
A space capsule ferrying the first comet dust samples to Earth parachuted on to a remote stretch of desert before dawn today, drawing cheers from elated scientists.
The touchdown capped a seven-year journey by NASA’s Stardust spacecraft, which zipped past a comet in 2004 to capture minute dust particles and store them in the capsule.
“Inside this thing is our treasure,” principal scientist Don Brownlee of the University of Washington told a post-landing news conference in the Utah desert.
A helicopter recovery team retrieved the capsule and transferred it to a clean room at nearby Michael Army Air Field. The capsule will be flown Tuesday to the Johnson Space Centre in Houston where scientists will examine the cosmic particles.
Researchers believe about a million samples of comet and interstellar dust - most tinier than the width of a human hair – are locked inside the capsule.
The dust grains are believed to be pristine leftovers from the birth of the solar system, with some of the particles thought to be older than the sun. Scientists hope to slice them into smaller bits and probe them under a microscope to directly learn about their chemical makeup and the processes that shaped the early universe.
“This is not the finish line. This is just the intermediate pit stop,” mission manager Tom Duxbury said.
The cosmic samples were gathered in 2004 from the comet Wild 2, a frozen body of ice and dust believed to have been formed billions of years ago.
The Stardust spacecraft used a tennis racket-sized collector mitt to snag the particles in a porous material and stored them in an aluminium canister.
Along the way, it also scooped up interstellar dust, tiny particles that stream through the solar system from other arts of the galaxy.
Early this morning, the shuttlecock-shaped capsule nose-dived through Earth’s atmosphere at a record 29,000 mph. Gusty winds pushed the capsule north of the bull’s-eye landing zone in soft mud.
It appeared as a bright orange fireball as it streaked over the small mining town of Tonopah, Nevada, halfway between Las Vegas and Reno, said Ron Dantowitz of NASA’s Ames Research Centre, who witnessed the capsule’s trek.
As it descended toward the desert, the first parachute opened at 100,000 feet, followed by a larger chute, which guided the capsule to a 10-mph landing on the salt flats. NASA officials said the capsule bounced three times before coming to rest on its side.
Despite the jolt, the capsule didn’t crack, said Joe Vellinga of Lockheed Martin, who helped lead the recovery. It will be days before engineers learn how well the heat shield held up during the fiery re-entry.
There was a tense moment in mission control when engineers could not immediately confirm the first parachute had unfurled, even though scientists watching from Dugway saw it open.
The landing was a relief for scientists after the 2004 Genesis mission, when the returning craft carrying solar wind particles slammed into the desert and cracked open, exposing the solar atoms to contamination.
