Don Brownlee
Don Brownlee
includes science surprised
This is when the real science begins. And I wouldn't be surprised if what we find includes some surprises.
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This is a history project. We are going to the edge of the solar system, collecting the original building blocks of the planets and bringing them back to our labs.
materials study
But the study of these materials will go on for decades.
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We are collecting the actual building blocks the solar system was formed from 4.5 billion years ago. We believe that the particles have a lot of information stored in them.
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We were stunned when we got to the comet and saw incredible features - steep cliffs, overhanging cliffs, spires and many features which, oddly enough, we had never been seen on other Solar System bodies.
features incredible saw seen solar steep system
We saw incredible features -- steep cliffs, overhanging cliffs, spires and many other things we had never seen on other solar system bodies.
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We did this mission to collect the most primitive materials we could in the solar system. We went to a comet that formed at the edge of the solar system, far from the sun under very cold conditions. We're confident that it was made out of the initial building blocks of our solar system.
captured exploded until
We didn't really know until now if we had captured them. For all we knew, they could have just exploded on impact.
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The primary purpose of the Stardust mission was to collect comet dust, the most basic material of the solar system, and bring it back to Earth for study.
starting work
We're just starting to work on this ... it will take years to analyze.
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We've undergone a very heavy level of scrutiny by review boards because of Genesis and because of the Columbia accident. . . . It was a cultural shift in NASA, that you're now required to understand all the risks.
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What we want to know is how organic molecules actually form in comets and whether they helped deliver organic material to the Earth before life began.
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We found mineral grains that are considered very high-temperature minerals -- they normally form under extremely high temperature conditions. And yet they were collected in a comet, the Siberia of the solar system.
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The real exciting thing will be opening the canister and seeing what the comet delivered to us.