Related topics: nasa · spacecraft · comet

NASA's Stardust sample return was 10 years ago last week

It was less than an hour into the new day of January 15, 2006 (EST), when tens of thousands of miles above our planet, two cable cutters and two retention bolts fired, releasing a spring which pushed a 101-pound (46-kilogram) ...

Mysteries of space dust revealed

The first analysis of space dust collected by a special collector onboard NASA's Stardust mission and sent back to Earth for study in 2006 suggests the tiny specks open a door to studying the origins of the solar system and ...

Seven samples from the solar system's birth

At this year's Lunar and Planetary Science Conference (LPSC), scientists reported that, after eight painstaking years of work, they have retrieved seven particles of interstellar dust from NASA's Stardust spacecraft.

Frozen comet had a watery past, scientists find

For the first time, scientists have found convincing evidence for the presence of liquid water in a comet, shattering the current paradigm that comets never get warm enough to melt the ice that makes up the bulk of their ...

NASA's Stardust: Good to the last drop

(PhysOrg.com) -- On Thursday, March 24 at about 4 p.m. PDT (7 p.m. EDT), NASA's Stardust spacecraft will perform a final burn with its main engines.

page 1 from 3