Science and Space

space and astronomy articles.

Stardust spacecraft goes into hibernation

NASA has deactivated the Stardust spacecraft two weeks after it jettisoned a space capsule to Earth with the first comet dust samples.

On Sunday, engineers powered down all of Stardust’s systems except for its solar panels and receiver antenna. The move was necessary to maintain the spacecraft’s health and save fuel for possible missions in the future.

Stardust has performed flawlessly these last seven years and it jettisoned the 100-pound capsule containing microscopic debris from comet Wild 2 and interstellar dust streaming through space.

The return samples were recently flown to a laboratory at the Johnson Space Center in Houston where scientists unlocked the canister containing the particles.

A preliminary investigation revealed that the Stardust capsule trapped thousands of cosmic debris samples, exceeding scientists’ expectations. Most of the particles were tinier than the width of a human hair, but a surprising number of particles were visible to the naked eye.

The $212 million project is managed by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena.

posted by: kyawoo at 20:43 | link | comments |
unmanned missions

Comments: