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Spacecraft survives close encounter with comet
'Stardust' to bring back particles that could unlock secrets of the universe
By Jeordan Legon
CNN
Friday, January 2, 2004 Posted: 6:17 PM EST (2317 GMT)
The Stardust spacecraft captured rare pictures of the nucleus of a comet.
(CNN) -- After traveling five years and 2.3 billion miles, a speeding NASA space probe pounced on the shimmering tail of a comet Friday, and appeared to trap tiny space dust to bring back to Earth without losing contact with mission control.
NASA's Stardust Mission was a space exploration mission that launched in 1999 with the goal of collecting samples from a comet and returning them to Earth for analysis.
The mission was deemed a success because it successfully collected samples from the comet Wild 2 and returned them to Earth in 2006. The samples provided valuable insights into the composition and formation of comets.
The main objectives of the Stardust Mission were to collect samples of dust and gas from the comet Wild 2, to study the structure and composition of the comet's nucleus, and to gather data on the formation and evolution of comets.
The Stardust spacecraft used a special collector called the "comet and interstellar dust collector" (CIDC) to collect samples of dust and gas from the comet's coma. The CIDC was made of a substance called aerogel, which was able to trap the particles without damaging them.
The Stardust Mission made several groundbreaking discoveries, including the presence of organic compounds in the comet's samples, which provided evidence for the theory that comets may have played a role in the origin of life on Earth. The mission also found evidence of high-temperature processing in the comet's nucleus, suggesting that comets may have formed in the inner solar system rather than the outer regions as previously thought.