images

Stardust sample analysis

by

Nasa/Novapix

Reference

e-son30-01520

Date

2007-01-06

Stardust is an interplanetary spacecraft, whose primary purpose was to investigate the makeup of the comet Wild 2 and its coma. It was launched on February 07 1999 and returned to Earth on January 15 2006.It is the first sample return mission to collect cosmic dust and return the sample to Earth. On this image, researchers studying the aerogel collector (centre) returned to Earth from the Stardust spacecraft. Aerogel is an extremely low density solid with several remarkable properties, also named "solid smoke" or "frozen smoke".