[X] My Assistant

[Guest_exobioquest_*]

Bob Shaw,

Sure Fred Hoyle theories are intrusting... but that was about it. Basically he lacked a major understanding of evolution and biochemistry, I can go into detail but don’t have the time now. Also I was thinking of Fred’s more outlandish theories in general, if viruses from space are the source of all evolution on earth, that there was no bigbang and the universe is steady state, etc. so if those are proven right then I will do as Carl on ATHF did and have the wooden end of a broom stick poking out the top of my skull!

[Guest_AlexBlackwell_*]

Anyone seen any images other than the two nasa-tv caps of the capsule since they opened it out. I'm a bit disapointed that we've not had any new pics etc.

See http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/10908902/

[djellison]

WOAH
The largest is around a millimeter, Brownlee added, and the biggest track is nearly large enough to insert your little finger. In the largest aerogel tracks, investigators can see the black comet dust at the end of the track.

Webcam of the analysis site
http://stardust.jpl.nasa.gov/mission/webcam.html

DOug

[odave]

"Stardust is a phenomenal success," Brownlee said.

Fantastic - congratulations to everyone involved with Stardust. I am eagerly awaiting my stardust@home "call-up papers". Hopefully I'm not 4F

[Bob Shaw]

WOAH
The largest is around a millimeter, Brownlee added, and the biggest track is nearly large enough to insert your little finger. In the largest aerogel tracks, investigators can see the black comet dust at the end of the track.

Webcam of the analysis site
http://stardust.jpl.nasa.gov/mission/webcam.html

DOug

Doug:

WOAH indeed! That's a thousand times larger than I'd expected - we're not just talking chemistry there, we're into the realms of mineralogy!

Great news!

Bob Shaw

[ElkGroveDan]

"Stardust is a phenomenal success," Brownlee said.

Fantastic - congratulations to everyone involved with Stardust.  I am eagerly awaiting my stardust@home "call-up papers".  Hopefully I'm not 4F 

If you get that 1mm slice, your hunt should be easy going.

[akuo]

Great images again on the main Nasa site of the inspection of the sample collector (some might have spotted the team photographing the collector earlier in the webcam). You can see great big splotches of comet particle hits:
Nasa Stardust site

Also announced was a science press conference for tomorrow (Jan 19th) about the samples. It will be on Nasa-tv at 11 am EST (16:00 UTC)

[djellison]

Wow

http://www.nasa.gov/images/content/141267m...e01007_high.jpg

Doug

[deglr6328]

SPLAT! wow there's enough material there to do GC/MS and NMR on let alone ion microprobe analysis!

[nprev]

SPLAT!    wow there's enough material there to do GC/MS and NMR on let alone ion microprobe analysis!

Incredible!!! I can't believe that impacts of that size didn't have a MAJOR effect on the spacecraft's trajectory, to say nothing of its structural integrity...score 100 pts. for Ed's "ice cream" analogy!!!


I don't see any legs or wings or anything in the splats...not that comet bugs would need them!

[Guest_RGClark_*]

...Also I was thinking of Fred’s more outlandish theories in general, if viruses from space are the source of all evolution on earth, that there was no bigbang and the universe is steady state, etc. so if those are proven right then I will do as Carl on ATHF did and have the wooden end of a broom stick poking out the top of my skull!

An odd view for someone who calls himself exobioquest.


- Bob

[Guest_RGClark_*]

Great images again on the main Nasa site of the inspection of the sample collector (some might have spotted the team photographing the collector earlier in the webcam). You can see great big splotches of comet particle hits:
Nasa Stardust site

Also announced was a science press conference for tomorrow (Jan 19th) about the samples. It will be on Nasa-tv at 11 am EST (16:00 UTC)

At least they're wearing surgical masks here!

- Bob

[Guest_exobioquest_*]

The photos are great, I see plenty of splattered bugs (use your imagination), can we get some photos of impacts of dust particle on the aluminum grid? I wonder if by analyzing the damage done to the frame of the collection grid we can guess at how effective the whipple shields were and if we can design lighter weight/smaller whipple shields without sacrificing performance.

An odd view for someone who calls himself exobioquest.
  -  Bob

Well I beleive pre-biotic panspermia is viable, but thats about as far as I go.

[Jeff7]

Somehow this just briefly struck me as amusing.

"Allright!!! We got a few grams of dust! DUST!!!!!"




Definitely looks like it was a very good collection mission. Next such mission can go Genesis-style, and have several of these collection things swing out, and bring back a few handfuls of dust or even some genuine chunks.

[edstrick]

One thing that , oddly, has totally NOT been discussed is that Stardust has undoubtably collected a third population of samples: interplanetary micrometeoroids.

While the flyswatter (tennis racket, my <deleted>) was extended for interstellar dust collection, the forward facing side intercepted populations of interplanetary dust particles travelling slower around the sun than the spacecraft (many near aphelion), as well as Oort cloud dust particles in retrograde orbits, etc. The rear facing side, beside the interstellar grain population, must have collected populations of particles travelling faster than the spacecraft (many near perihelion). I have heard absolutely no mention of these "background" populations of particles that were collected, I'd assume decidely more abundant than the interstellar particles.

The Comet grains will have hit the collector nearly perpendicular to it's surface in essentially parallel trajectories. The interstellar dust grains, again, will have hit the collector nearly perpendicular to it's surface (by the design of the collection geometry and the known arrival of interstellar material in the solar system), but will have some "dispersion" around parallel impacts to to (I suspect poorly known) random grain velocities.

The background population should hit the flyswatter at all sorts of angles, on the average, not parallel to the target comet's dust and on the average not parallel to the interstellar dust.

It will be very interesting to see what they collected, how much on each side of the flyswatter, and of how many populations of material can be identified.