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) ...

Image: New Norcia deep-space ground tracking station

Twelve years ago this month, in March 2003, ESA inaugurated a new deep-space ground tracking station 8 km south of the town of New Norcia, which is about 150 km north of Perth, in Western Australia.

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.

Looks like a comet but feels like an asteroid? That's wild!

Comet ISON's fate has left many sad. For the public, the comet could have made for a spectacular view in December. For scientists, it would have been a chance to learn more about these mysterious bodies. But why are comets ...

The chemistry of exploding stars

(PhysOrg.com) -- Fundamental chemical processes in predecessors of our solar system are now a bit better understood: An international team led by Peter Hoppe, researcher at the Max Planck Institute for Chemistry in Mainz, ...

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