Stardust samples better than expected
Stardust, the probe launched in 1999 to intersect with Comet Wild 2, landed a little less than a week ago, and the preliminary results since then have been quite promising. There have been both large and small impact craters — some large enough to be seen ten feet away. Eventually images of the aerogel will make their way across the Internet to a computer screen near you in the form of Stardust@home (official site) — though I still think it’s a pretty silly “distributed computing” project.
There may be more than a million particles embedded in the aerogel, and the mission is being deemed a success. It certainly is a success, though the life science geek in me would like to see the evidence for extraterrestrial life embedded in the gel, but I suspect that’s asking a little much.
For those of you who like movies and animations, you can check out the Stardust re-entry video. It’s pretty cool; very surreal looking.
[tags]Stardust, stardust@home[/tags]
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hey i love this image and i am working on a project about stardust and ths helps me alot
Comment by brianna — February 21, 2007 @ 4:30 pm