Don Brownlee
Don Brownlee
comet delivered exciting opening seeing
The real exciting thing will be opening the canister and seeing what the comet delivered to us.
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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.
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There are two major possibilities. One that they formed in the innermost, hotter-most regions of our solar system when the sun and planets were forming, and they were thrown out -- all the way out to the Pluto region of the solar system. The other possibility is they were formed around other stars, in hot regions around other stars.
earth easy fairly life planets
Life is fairly easy to create, but I think planets like Earth are going to be rare.
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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.
return risk simplest stardust
The capsule's return is probably the simplest of all the things Stardust has done and has the least risk. Nonetheless, it has to work.
mystery
This is very exciting. It's a mystery story.
aided blown entire eye high particle
You can't see them with the unaided eye (but) with the aided eye (through a microscope) you can see everything. A little particle blown up to high magnification is like working on an entire state! It's amazing.
scientific
It's a crystalline silicate grain. This is great; we've already got scientific results.
backyard bringing collected comet course dust lands material particle per primitive square tons year
Each year we have 30 to 40,000 tons of primitive material from comets and asteroids that lands on Earth, and this is about one particle per square meter per day. So during the course of our seven-year mission, there was more comet dust collected in your backyard than what we're bringing home.
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These are literally the building blocks of our planetary system. Personally, I feel a strong attachment to this thing and we should all feel a strong attachment to it because the fact is all the atoms in our bodies -- the carbon atoms and the oxygen, nitrogen, potassium and calcium and so forth -- all those atoms were in stardust rings ... before the solar system formed.
atoms blocks bodies building carbon comet coming forth literally planetary solar stardust system
These are literally the building blocks of our planetary system. All of the atoms in our bodies - the carbon atoms, the oxygen, the nitrogen, potassium, calcium and so forth - all of those atoms were in stardust grains like those coming out of the comet now before the solar system formed.
starting work
We're just starting to work on this ... it will take years to analyze.
deliver earth form helped life material molecules organic whether
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.