Finally, NASA Had A Good Week

Is it possible for a scientist to be giddy? That's quite possible... especially if that scientist is on the team examining cometary particles brought back to Earth by NASA's Stardust probe.

"It exceeded all of our grandest expectations," said Donald Brownlee from the University of Washington, Seattle, as well as chief investigator for the mission. "We should have more than one million particles larger than one micron in diameter."

A micron is a millionth of a meter... small to most, but huge in the scientific community.

When the Stardust probe flew through the tail of the Wild 2 comet, those particles were captured in a dust collector, similar in size and shape to a handball racket. The collector was filled with silica aerogel, which is the lightest man-made material known -- so light, the collector was able to trap the fast-moving interstellar particles without vaporizing them.

Next up for the team will be to remove the particles from the aerogel, according to investigator Mike Zolensky. Eventually, the particles will be sent to scientists around the world to be analyzed.

"We'll start with analyses that are nondestructive," said Zolensky to Bloomberg News. "You can look at samples still in the aerogel and look at the broad chemistry and mineralogy to some degree. Then we'll extract them and see more and more detailed and destructive analyses," including slicing the particles into pieces, he said.

Scientists hope the particles will show the composition of Wild 2, and possibly even give humanity insight into how the solar system formed.

The initial results will be announced in March.

As was reported in Aero-News, the Stardust capsule landed safely in the Utah desert the morning of January 15, after completing the 2.1 billion-mile round trip to Wild 2 and back, that took just under seven years to complete. The spacecraft that carried Stardust along for the ride is now heading to orbit around the sun.

For all its recent hardships, it can't be denied NASA had a good week. With the successful return of Stardust -- along with Thursday's launch of the New Horizons probe  -- those at NASA who needed a victory received two, and high-profile ones at that.

Well done, everybody. You showed NASA can still get the job done.

FMI: www.nasa.gov