Stardust Options

[lyford]

huh, is this not already a common hobby for many people?!

I hope that title is a typo...

Attached thumbnail(s)

 

[ljk4-1]

LAUNCH ALERT

Brian Webb
Ventura County, California

E-mail: kd6nrp@earthlink.net

Web Site: http://www.spacearchive.info

2006 January 22 (Sunday) 19:28 PST
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STARDUST REENTRY OBSERVATIONS

In response to my request for Stardust reentry observations, I
received the following reports from Gary Baker and Rick Baldridge.

Gary Baker:

"FYI, I viewed the Stardust reentry in cloud-free skies from
Roseville, CA (northeast of Sacramento), no closer than 180 miles from
the reentry ground track. The reentry was on time and its brightness
was impressive given its distance. It was at least as bright as mag -2
(Jupiter), and probably approached -4 (Venus). Its apparent brightness
peaked when the SRC was closest to my location (within 10 seconds of
acquisition), and then held roughly constant as the SRC ventured
further east and lower in my sky. It first appeared pure white, and
then took on a subtle reddish hue that it kept until finally fading
out rapidly at about 2 deg elevation, just above the Sierra Nevada. It
was really moving -- I've seen Shuttle reentries, and the SRC was very
obviously moving faster than the Shuttle returning from LEO. The SRC
appeared very much like a natural meteoric fireball."

Rick Baldridge:

"Yeah, we saw it. William Phelps, Brian Day and I ended up NE of Red
Bluff in the foothills about 880ft elevation on Highway 36 that goes
to Lassen (N40.268, W122.130). I screwed up on the timing by one
minute (too tired and misread the plot I had), so we weren't as
prepared as we would have liked to have been. If Brian hadn't seen
Stardust in the northeast sky and yelled to us, I think all three of
us would have missed it. From our location, it should have first
become visible in Perseus and gone just slightly under Polaris as it
headed toward the east. William and I were looking west of Polaris
when Brian spotted it well to the east of us. We saw it for maybe 25
seconds, and video taped it for much less than that. I sent a
preliminary report to Peter Jenniskens (Ames) via the Stardust
website giving our coordinates, equipment and basic results.

It was moving real fast -- about twice as fast as a Shuttle re-entry
but two to three times slower than a typical meteor. It was definitely
red-orange but showed little or no plasma wake at that point. It did
get fairly bright (about zero-magnitude - Saturn's brightness) and was
increasing in intensity as it descended toward Lassen Peak as viewed
from our location. It all happened so fast that we all said, "What the
__ ? Was that it?" simply because we had driven 5 hours to get out in
the middle of nowhere and it was over in 30 seconds, plus we still had
another 5 hours to drive back to the Bay Area. But we knew that. I'm
glad we saw it. Seeing the fastest re-entry of the man-made object WAS
certainly something, and I'm happy for NASA that it landed
successfully.

The videos I took came out pretty well. Will try to post them soon.
The photos so far are disappointing. One of mine BARELY shows a streak
as the trail heads into the horizon near Mt. Lassen. Haven't seen
Brian's shot yet or William's stuff, but William did get a video and
Brian mentioned last night that one of his photos does barely show the
streak.

Kevin went out on the tarmac at Moffett (NASA/Ames) to get a good
northern horizon but he didn't see anything naked-eye. My brother
Brian was in Fort Bragg but I haven't spoken to him yet to find out
whether he saw it or not.

Some stuff is slowly being posted at:

http://dgilbert3.home.mindspring.com/stardust.htm

http://reentry.arc.nasa.gov/index.html

http://reentry.arc.nasa.gov/firstreactions.html"

[Guest_AlexBlackwell_*]

Stardust's Return Points NASA Toward More Deep Space Missions
By Michael Mecham
Aviation Week & Space Technology
01/22/2006 09:21:34 PM

[Guest_paulanderson_*]

Another Stardust press confeence coming up next week, I wonder if they've found something unusual  :

The media briefing has now been postponed...

http://www.nasa.gov/home/hqnews/2006/jan/H..._postponed.html

[Guest_BruceMoomaw_*]

I hope they didn't find the mutilated corpses of teeny tiny little people buried in the aerogel...

[Ames]

I hope they didn't find the mutilated corpses of teeny tiny little people buried in the aerogel...

Stop-it! The conspiritorialists will be all over us!

Arrrrrgh!

[edstrick]

"I hope they didn't find the mutilated corpses of teeny tiny little people buried in the aerogel... "

No... they found MEDFLIES.

[Guest_BruceMoomaw_*]

A far more chilling possibility. The Andromeda Strain would be nothing by comparison.

(You know, come to think of it, in that novel the germ was brought back to Earth by PRECISELY this kind of mission, albeit one in Earth orbit. It's a mark of the scientific ignorance that frequently lurks underneath Michael Crichton's facade that he'd think the military might consider such a mission economically worthwhile to look for new germ weapons.)

[Guest_RGClark_*]

A far more chilling possibility.  The Andromeda Strain would be nothing by comparison. 

(You know, come to think of it, in that novel the germ was brought back to Earth by PRECISELY this kind of mission, albeit one in Earth orbit.  It's a mark of the scientific ignorance that frequently lurks underneath Michael Crichton's facade that he'd think the military might consider such a mission economically worthwhile to look for new germ weapons.)

Could it be "tar" found in the particles?
The interstellar dust collector on Stardust had already found complex organic tar-like molecules with its CIDA mass spectrometer:

Tarlike macro-molecules detected in 'stardust'
MAX-PLANCK INSTITUTE NEWS RELEASE
Posted: April 29, 2000
"It is the size of these molecular fragments with nuclear masses of up to 2000 (water e.g. has 18 such units) which surprised us as much as the seemingly absence of any mineral constituents", explains Dr. Kissel of the Garching-based Max-Planck-Institut für extraterrestrische Physik. "Only organic molecules can reach those sizes". The largest molecules found in space so far are the polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAH) which reach masses of a few hundred mass units.
"The details of the mass spectra measured with CIDA show that the molecules of the interstellar dust must have about 10 percent of nitrogen and/or oxygen in addition to hydrogen and carbon. This means that these cannot be pure PAHs, which are planar, but are especially due to the nitrogen extend into all three spacial directions."
http://www.spaceflightnow.com/news/n0004/29tarstardust/

These "tar-like" particles are presumed to be interstellar because of their direction and high-speed. However, it is notable that the Giotto spacecraft also detected "tar-like" materials on the surface of comet Halley. Perhaps the CIDA detected particles arose from jets from comets that could explain their high speeds and unexpected directions.
On Earth actual tar is formed from combustion or decay of living material. If these Stardust grains are found to contain true tar that would suggest they arose from past life in space.


c.f.,

Newsgroups: sci.astro, sci.astro.seti, rec.arts.sf.science, sci.bio.misc
From: Robert Clark <rgcl...@my-deja.com>
Date: 2000/04/29
Subject: Re: Tarlike macro-molecules detected in 'stardust' (Forwarded)
http://groups.google.com/group/sci.astro.s...42528d44bba448a


Bob Clark

[ugordan]

If these Stardust grains are found to contain true tar that would suggest they arose from past life in space.

Why do you think tar can come only from decay of living organisms?

[Phillip]

Should we re-name this thread "tardust"?

[ljk4-1]

Is This Life?

The Scientist January 2006

*************************

In the past decade, individual labs
have met 10 of 12 proposed
requirements for creating a
"protocell," but in quite different
ways. With only two steps remaining,
they might achieve a synthetic
organism within this...

http://www.kurzweilai.net/email/newsRedire...sID=5245&m=7610

[Phil Stooke]

A couple of Wild-2 maps. The first is a reprojection of two images using an ellipsoid shape model - needs improving. North at the top, simple cylindrical projection (modified from an earlier post):



The second is a DEM made from the plate model recently put up on the PDS small bodies website. Same projection. Darker areas are lower. The south is smooth because it wasn't seen.



Phil

Edited a bit later: I don't really trust this DEM very much. I'll have to think about it. It is a faithful rendition of their model, but I think the model could be improved a lot.

[Guest_RGClark_*]

Why do you think tar can come only from decay of living organisms?

In nature, actual tar only arises from the breakdown of prior living matter.
It would be like finding petroleum oil in space. In nature, this arises only over long periods from the breakdown of prior living material.

Tar
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tar

La Brea Tar Pits.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/La_Brea_Tar_Pits


- Bob

[The Messenger]

In nature, actual tar only arises from the breakdown of prior living matter.
It would be like finding petroleum oil in space. In nature, this arises only over long periods from the breakdown of prior living material.

Tar
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tar

La Brea Tar Pits.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/La_Brea_Tar_Pits
  - Bob

Hold the phone. We assume tar on Earth is all byproduct of life processes. We can also make it synthetically, and there is no reason to assume there are not any natural synthetic processes that predate our own.

Secondly, this news release was in 2000 - the visible particles from star dust appear to be - on first blush - minerals, not tars. Could it be the particle sizes were too great to be detected by the in situ analyzers?