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Stardust successfully landed

After a seven-year, 2.9 billion-mile round trip, NASA’s Stardust space capsule floated down to a landing in the Utah desert early Sunday, bringing back interstellar dust and comet samples that scientists hope will yield clues to the origins of the solar system.

The mission came to a climax in the middle of the night, starting with the sample return capsule’s release from its mothership when it was 69,000 miles (110,000 kilometers) away from Earth. The shuttlecock-shaped capsule streaked through the atmosphere at about 29,000 mph (46,000 kilometers per hour), representing the fastest re-entry of any human-made probe.

Parachutes eased the final phase of the descent, ending with the landing at a military test range about 3:10 a.m. MT (5:10 a.m. ET). A helicopter recovery team located the capsule and would bring it to a clean room at the Utah Test and Training Range for processing. From there, it will be flown to the Johnson Space Center in Houston for analysis.

The mission marked the first time a spacecraft flew into deep space and brought back tiny fragments of a comet.

Launched in 1999, the Stardust spacecraft flew through the Wild 2 comet’s coma in 2004, a fuzzy halo of gas and dust. Outfitted with armored bumpers, the spacecraft survived a hail of debris to trap comet dust with a collector mitt packed with aerogel, a porous material made up of mostly air. The cosmic particles were then tucked inside the capsule for the trip home. Along with the comet dust, the spacecraft also captured interstellar dust — tiny particles that stream through the solar system thought to be from ancient stars that exploded and died. The spacecraft also beamed back 72 black-and-white pictures showing broad mesas, craters, pinnacles and canyons with flat floors on the surface of Wild 2, a craggy comet about 500 million miles (800 million kilometers) from Earth at Stardust’s launch.

The Stardust mothership will remain in permanent orbit around the sun.

The mission cost $212 million.

posted by: kyawoo at 11:02 | link | comments |
unmanned missions, comets

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