NASA Stardust Mission: Collecting Comet Dust and Bringing it to Earth

SPACE — On January 2, 2004, NASA’s Stardust spacecraft flew past Comet Wild 2. It was tasked with collecting comet dust and bringing it back to Earth.

Stardust is the first robotic sample return mission of its kind. It did not land on the comet, but flew close enough to collect samples of dust grains from the comet’s coma.

The coma is the cloudy region around a comet, where vaporized ice and other particles are blown off the comet’s surface. This material forms the tail that is characteristic of comets.

Stardust also took several photos of the comet’s icy core. Two weeks later, he brought a dust sample back to Earth. Source: Space.com

2024-01-02 13:31:00
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