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To: Murrey Walker who wrote (60356)	1/2/2004 3:24:55 PM
From: Sully-	Respond to of 65232

Spacecraft grabs comet by the tail 'Stardust' to collect particles that could unlock secrets of the universe By Jeordan Legon CNN Friday, January 2, 2004 Posted: 2:42 PM EST (1942 GMT) (CNN) -- After traveling four years and 2.3 billion miles, a speeding NASA space probe pounced on the shimmering tail of a comet Friday and prepared to trap tiny space dust to bring back to Earth. At 2:44 p.m. EST today, the Stardust spacecraft should reach its closest point with the massive chunk of ice and rock known as the Wild 2 Comet, getting within 200 miles at a relative speed of 13,645 mph, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration said. At that point, the craft will snap pictures of the dark mass in the comet's nucleus and stretch out its robotic arm to trap comet dust in a tennis-racket-shaped catcher filled with a material called aerogel. The hope is that the dust, which resembles solid smoke and has been lingering in the cold of space for billions of years, could provide clues to how the universe formed -- including the stars, planets and even our solar system. "In recent decades, spacecraft have passed fairly close to comets and provided us with excellent data," said Dr. Don Brownlee of the University of Washington, principal investigator for the Stardust mission. "Stardust, however, marks the first time that we have ever collected samples from a comet and brought them back to Earth for study." Surviving the close encounter 242 million miles from Earth with the Wild 2 -- pronounced Vild 2 -- won't be easy. Rocks and other debris are expected to pelt the refrigerator-sized craft six times faster than the speed of bullets. The Stardust will be guarded as it makes its vital recovery by two bumpers in the front, protecting its solar panels and another shield on the probe's body. "Just like in Star Trek we have our shields up," said Tom Duxbury, Stardust program manager. "At any time we could run into a cometary particle." After the particle samples are gathered, the collector will fold down into a capsule, which will close like a clamshell and get ready to make its return trip to Earth. In January of 2006, the capsule is expected to detach from the craft and make a soft landing in the Utah desert, while the $200 million Stardust mission returns to space. The capsule could also bring back particles that it collected from February through May 2000, when Stardust passed through a region where interstellar particles flow through the solar system. "The samples that we collect are extremely small, 10 to 300 microns in diameter, and can only be adequately studied in laboratories with sophisticated analytical instruments," Brownlee said. If the gathering of the dust succeeds, researchers should start seeing some reports back on Earth almost immediately. After the flyby, a dust counter is expected to report back to Earth the size and number of particles gathered and another gadget is set to analyze the composition of the matter. And there will be 72 black-and-white pictures of the comet's core that will be beamed back to NASA. But the mission's biggest promise remains the return of the space particles to Earth. Researchers hope the unique chemical and physical information locked within the comet's dust samples, no bigger than a thumbnail, will teach them whether comets or interstellar dust provided the water or organic material necessary to form life. Comets, possibly the oldest bodies in the solar system, could contain a record of the original material that formed the sun and planets 4.5 billion years ago. Interstellar particles, also gathered by the Stardust mission, consist of most of the known elements and include complex carbon structures. Their exact origin remains a mystery but scientists think they are linked to young stars. cnn.com