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  Home arrow News arrow News from Space arrow Stardust at home

 
Stardust at home | Print |  E-mail
Written by staff   
Wednesday, 18 January 2006

>Stardust at home
NASA’s Stardust sample return mission returned safely to Earth when the capsule carrying cometary and interstellar particles successfully touched down on Sunday, January 15 in the desert salt flats of the U.S. Air Force Utah Test and Training Range, according to a recent NASA release.

“Ten years of planning and seven years of flight operations were realized early this morning when we successfully picked up our return capsule off of the desert floor in Utah,” said Tom Duxbury, Stardust project manager at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif. “The Stardust project has delivered to the international science community material that has been unaltered since the formation of our solar system.”

Stardust released its sample return capsule at 9:57 p.m. Pacific time; the capsule entered the atmosphere four hours later at 1:57 a.m. The drogue and main parachutes deployed at 2:00 and 2:05 a.m.

The sample return capsule's science canister and its cargo of comet and interstellar dust particles will be stowed inside a special aluminum carrying case to await transfer to the Johnson Space Center, Houston, where it will be opened. NASA’s Stardust mission traveled 2.88 billion miles during its seven-year round-trip odyssey. Scientists believe these samples will help provide answers to fundamental questions about comets and the origins of the solar system.

 
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