The StarDust Mission

MISSION:  To collect dust and carbon-based samples during its closest encounter with Comet Wild 2.

In 1999 NASA launched a Discovery Mission called ‘Stardust’, the main purpose of this mission was to come into contact with the coma of a comet [Wild 2], which it did in January 2004.

Under the contact with the comet the spacecraft collected particles with the use of a most strange material called [Aerogel]. The spacecraft returned to Earth/Utah United states on January 15, 2006.

  MISSION Overview - http://stardust.jpl.nasa.gov/mission/index.html 

WHO: NASA, Discovery mission - http://discovery.nasa.gov/  THE PLANETARY SOCIETY - http://www.planetary.org/about/

“Phase 1” Begins

Back in the beginning of 2006 I was watching CNN one night, and what a ‘right’ night to be watching. 

There was a man speaking about a new NASA project, which would be open to everyone who had an internet connection, in the world. 

The project would start some time after, so I noted the start-date down, and stayed tuned. The project began a couple of months later, and I added myself as a member on the first day.  

I loved it right from the start, I find it both fascinating and inspiring in its own way. But this kind of research is not for everyone, because it takes patience’s, eye for details, eagerness, and some mouse-clicking ;)  

“Phase 2” is up and Running

Now we’ve come to the year 2008 and ‘Phase 2’ is in motion, which started around August 2007, almost a year after “Phase 1” had begun.

They have finished 40 % of the scanning process at the Johnson Space Center in Houston, where after these specimens were sent to Stardust@home headquarters in Berkeley, they then turned these into small scannable movies, for us Dusters to study. 

-Altogether, 24,000 dusters have so far searched about 40 million(!) movies for interstellar dust grains, meaning that each Stardust@home movie has been viewed more than one hundred times on average.

The Dusters have already identified 50 different places in the Aerogel, which might contain actual interstellar dust particles. 
http://www.planetary.org/programs/projects/stardustathome/phase2.html

To read more about this project, please visit this page: http://stardustathome.ssl.berkeley.edu/index.php