Originally published January 22 2006
Seven-year journey ends for the Stardust spacecraft
by Mike Adams, the Health Ranger, NaturalNews Editor
The 4.5-billion-km journey of the Stardust is almost over. The spacecraft will deliver particles from the Wild 2 comet when it returns to earth. The particles may help us understand the origins of the solar system and ocean, as well as atmosphere development.
After a seven-year, 4.5-billion-km journey, the spacecraft Stardust is expected to deliver ancient particles from the comet Wild 2 on its return to earth on January 15.
Stardust, launched in 1999, flew within 240 km of the comet in the outer orbits of the sun near Pluto two years ago and has been making its way back to earth since then.
"It's the first of its kind, a round trip to a comet," said Ed Hirst, mission system manager at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California.
The particles could shed more light on the origins of the solar system and how oceans and an atmosphere developed on earth, said another lead scientist, Andy Dantzler, director of the Solar System Division at NASA's headquarters.
The metre-wide Stardust space capsule and its precious cargo will separate from the spacecraft on January 14, plummet through fiery re-entry and deploy a parachute for a soft landing in the deserts of western Utah early next day, the scientists hope.
Those will be nervous moments, especially after last year's ill-fated return of another capsule carrying space particles, the Genesis space probe.
Comets are a compelling subject for astronomers and space scientists because they were left over from the formation of the solar system.
"All the atoms in our body - calcium, oxygen, potassium - were in stardust grains before the solar system formed," said Don Brownlee, principal investigator from the University of Washington in Seattle.
A comet is a "library that scarfed up building block materials and stored them at extremely cold temperatures" for billions of years, he said.
Experts around the world are to be kept busy for a decade analysing the particles, often atom by atom, he said.
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