Stardust

Stardust spacecraft

Comet Wild 2

Stardust/NExT, a U.S. space probe that captured and returned dust grains from interplanetary space and from a comet. Stardust was launched on February 7, 1999. It flew past the asteroid Annefrank on November 2, 2002, and the comet Wild 2 on January 2, 2004. A sample capsule containing the dust grains returned to Earth and landed in the Utah desert on January 15, 2006. The main space probe was redesignated NExT (New Exploration of Tempel 1) and flew by Comet Tempel 1 on February 14, 2011. That comet was the first to be visited on successive approaches to the Sun; it had previously been visited by the U.S. space probe Deep Impact in 2005. The Stardust/NExT mission ended on March 24, 2011, when the spacecraft burned its remaining fuel and made its final transmission to Earth.

The most significant instrument was the Stardust Sample Collection Apparatus, two arrays of aerogel mounted on opposite sides of a common plate. Aerogel is an inert silica-based substance that has an extremely low density (2 mg per cubic cm [0.001 ounce per cubic inch]). It is designed to capture particles by gently slowing and then stopping them in the aerogel matrix. One side was 3 cm (1 inch) thick for collection of heavier cometary dust particles. The other side was thinner, just 1 cm (0.3 inch), for collection of interplanetary dust. The collecting area of each plate was 1,000 square cm (155 square inches). The arrays were enclosed during the mission and exposed only during the collecting phases in space.

One major finding of the mission was the discovery of the amino acid glycine in cometary dust. Amino acids are chemical compounds that make up the proteins used by life. The presence of glycine supports the idea that some of the substances necessary for life could have come from space and that life may be common in the universe. Another major finding was the detection of the crater made by Deep Impact in the surface of Comet Tempel 1. The crater was shallow and had been partially filled in, which showed that the cometary nucleus was made of loose material.

Stardust also found that the dust in comets is from the early solar system. The dust includes Inti (named for the Inca god of the Sun), a calcium-aluminum inclusion mineral common in meteorites. These and other aspects indicate that the dust grains in comets were forged in the hot young inner solar system and then swept to the outer solar system, where they were gradually incorporated into the icy material that became comets.

Other instruments on the Stardust probe included the Imaging and Navigation Camera, which was used to help fine-tune the approach to target bodies and then to produce high-resolution images during the flyby. However, two years into the mission, the filter wheel became stuck in the white-light position, thus precluding the collection of images at other wavelengths. Contamination on the outside optical element also caused a slight halo effect on all images. The Cometary and Interstellar Dust Analyzer detected the mass of dust particles after they scattered off a small silver target. The Dust Flux Monitor Instrument was basically a sophisticated large-area microphone that measured particle impact rates and mass distribution. It was built as a shield to protect the spacecraft from fast-moving dust.