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Capsule carrying comet particles arrives in Houston
(AP)
Updated: 2006-01-18 08:52
The Stardust space capsule arrived Tuesday at NASA's Johnson Space Center,
where scientists plan to unlock its internal canister to analyze the first comet
particles ever captured in space.
Technicians at Utah's Dugway Proving Ground had readied the capsule Monday
for its trip to Houston after it survived a fiery plunge through the atmosphere
early Sunday. It bounced three times in soft mud before coming to rest on its
side.
The landing chipped off a piece of the spacecraft's heat shield, but the
capsule and its canister were in otherwise good shape, said Joe Vellinga of
Lockheed Martin, which built the capsule.
In its seven-year voyage, Stardust looped around the sun three times to
capture interstellar dust particles. In 2004, the spacecraft also swooped past
the comet Wild 2 and used a tennis-racket-sized mitt to collect more particles.
The particles are thought to be pristine leftovers from the formation of the
solar system about 4.5 billion years ago.
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