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Stardust at home!

tkingdoll

Penultimate Amazing
Joined
Jul 1, 2005
Messages
12,382
No, not the Vegas hotel, but this:

http://stardustathome.ssl.berkeley.edu/background.html

"In January 2004, the Stardust spacecraft flew through the coma of comet Wild2 and captured thousands of cometary dust grains in special aerogel collectors. Two years later, in January 2006, Stardust will return these dust grains --- the first sample return from a solid solar-system body beyond the Moon --- to Earth. But Stardust carries an equally important payload on the opposite side of the cometary collector: the first samples of contemporary interstellar dust ever collected. As well as being the first mission to return samples from a comet, Stardust is the first sample return mission from the Galaxy. But finding the incredibly tiny interstellar dust impacts in the Stardust Interstellar Dust Collector (SIDC) will be extremely difficult.

We are seeking volunteers to help us to search for these tiny samples of matter from the galaxy. Volunteers are critical to the success of this project. Please help us find the first samples of contemporary Stardust ever collected."
 
im542s0cx.jpg
 
Deceleration occurred at 10k feet as planned and have visual on the main parachute. Great news.

BBC is carrying it live from NASA.
 
I was a bit annoyed that the successful touchdown of a seven year mission had to be seen on the BBC livefeed, I could not find any media in the US carrying it.

Yet we have time for important things like Sylvia Browne's predictions. SHAME!

preaching to the choir
 
They don't even have enough money to hire temps to search through the Stardust images.

Bah. They should take the money away from one season's worth of football broadcasts and give it to the scientists. That'd let them run a dozen fully-funded programs.
 
2809 out of 19473 and still going. Catch me if you can!

I have actually found a number of dust particles, but I have only been the first to locate a particle on one occasion, and I shall be the first to admit that it is probably an inclusion in the material from the manufacturing process, and not a real dust grain.
 

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