Feature April 3, 2008
Stardust Stars on Earth as it Does in the Heavens
April 3, 2008 - Stardust Spacecraft is currently 208 million miles from Earth
While their spacecraft's journeys may have taken it more than halfway to Jupiter,
members of the Stardust team have lately been doing some roaming of their
own. A great deal of the traveling has been to accept awards and receive the
accolades of their aerospace and science-oriented peers. Among the honors the
Stardust team has received: the Aviation Week & Space Technology Program
Excellence Award; the Popular Mechanics' Breakthrough Award; and the Rotary
National Award for Space Achievement. Now, Stardust can add above its mantle
the National Air and Space Museum Trophy Award.
"We feel a little like Tiger Woods," said Tom Duxbury, Stardust's project manager
at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. "It is great for the team
to receive such recognition for our accomplishments, but we understand that
significant challenges lie ahead that will take our dedicated attention and focus."
What is behind Stardust -- and made them so honorable - is nine years of deep
space travel, two Earth flybys, one close flyby of a comet's nucleus, one record-
setting high-speed return to Earth of samples from said comet, and literally
dozens of groundbreaking scientific papers based on those samples. What lies
ahead for Stardust and its team is a new challenge -- a new comet.
"Stardust came through its historic comet Wild 2 flyby and Earth sample return
with resources to spare," said Duxbury. "NASA took a look at what was left in the
tanks -- of both spacecraft and personnel -- and decided Stardust should head on
out to explore another comet, Tempel 1."
You could say comet Temple 1 is the temple of high-velocity deep space
exploration. On July 4, 2005, an impactor deployed by another NASA spacecraft
-- Deep Impact -- was run over by comet Tempel 1 at about six miles a second.
Like Stardust, Deep Impact provided great strides for cometary science. Now the
plan is for the Stardust spacecraft to revisit the site of Deep Impact's triumph.
Called Stardust-NExT, the mission will employ the Stardust spacecraft's camera,
cometary dust analyzer and dust flux monitor during a Feb. 2011 flyby of Tempel
1, where it will observe changes to the surface of the comet since the Deep
Impact mission's visit in 2005.
"Tempel 1 made its closest approach to the sun on July 5, 2005, a day after
Deep Impact's visit," said Joe Veverka, a scientist at Cornell University, Ithaca,
N.Y. and the principal investigator of Stardust-NExT. "Things happen to comets
when they get closest to the sun and Stardust-NExT is our first opportunity to
observe these changes firsthand."
While comet Tempel 1 is the future of Stardust science, comet Wild 2 is the not-
so-distant past and a big reason for the Smithsonian Trophy. A lot has happened
since Stardust's sample return capsule entered Earth's atmosphere in the early
morning of Jan 15, 2006, at a record speed of 28,860 miles per hour.
"The samples that Stardust returned to Earth are helping rewrite the very history
of our solar system," said Don Brownlee, a scientist at the University of
Washington, Seattle, and the Stardust mission's principal investigator. "The
samples have been distributed to researchers around the world and their findings
are just beginning to come in."
Among the discoveries garnered by Stardust was the finding that comets are a
very odd mix of materials that formed at the highest and lowest temperatures that
existed in the early solar system. Comets have been cold for billions of years, but
their ingredients are remarkable products of both fire and ice. Because the rocky
materials in comet Wild 2 formed at such high temperatures, scientists believe
that they formed in the hot inner regions of the young solar system and were then
transported all the way to beyond the orbit of Neptune.
Want to know more about Stardust science? Click here:
"Comet Wild 2 is a collection of materials that probably came from all regions of
the young solar system and thus it has turned out to be a wonderful "time
capsule," said Brownlee. "The instruments and techniques used to study our
samples have already greatly improved since we began looking at them in 2006,
so the original Stardust mission and its discoveries should continue for years to
come."
JPL, a division of the California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, manages
both Stardust and Stardust-NExT for the NASA Science Mission Directorate,
Washington, D.C. Don Brownlee of University of Washington, Seattle, is
Stardust's principal investigator. Joseph Veverka of Cornell University is
Stardust-NExT's principal investigator. Lockheed Martin Space Systems, Denver
Colo., manages day-to-day mission operations.
D.C. Agle (818) 393-9011
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.
To remove yourself from all mailings from NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, please go to http://www.kintera.org/TR.asp?a=kmLZKgM5KuL8JtJ&s=jtJ0K4PJIfKMI3PPJtE&m=nlL3KjNZKhK4H
No comments:
Post a Comment