Anthonares

Those that closely follow space-related news will no doubt have already heard of Stardust@Home, but I decided I would wait until the Stardust probe made it safely back to Earth before I wrote about it. Well, that has happened, NASA’s Stardust probe has returned safely (an infrared image of a helicopter landed at the touchdown site is shown at the right), hopefully bearing millions of particles shed by Comet Wild 2 (pronounced “Vilt 2″ and shown in a composite image below) and as many as 100 particles from the Interstellar Medium outside the solar system itself. The mission is something of a milestone, as it represents only the second time that particles have been successfully returned from beyond our Moon (Genesis was the first), and it may give us our first opportunity ever to see particles from a comet and from the Interstellar Medium.
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