[X] My Assistant

[Guest_BruceMoomaw_*]

I just caught this intriguing little note in a news release from the U. of Chicago on Stardust sample analysis.

http://www.spaceflightnow.com/news/n0602/20stardust/ :

" 'The Stardust spacecraft, meanwhile, may someday see further cometary action. "Stardust is still very healthy and has fuel left over,' [Thanasis] Economou said. 'After dropping the Space Return Canister, the spacecraft was diverted from entering the Earth's atmosphere and placed in an orbit around the sun that could bring it to another comet in February 2011.' "

Hmmm. Nice news, if true. Anyone have any idea which short-period comet this could be?



Meanwhile, another article on the first preliminary results from the dust analysis seems to show a surprise: a lack of hydrated silicates.

http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/0602...ust_update.html :

"While the samples appear to lack indicators of water, they do contain sulfides, a key component to life...

"The early results reveal that the 4.5 billion-year-old comet contains iron, sulfides, glassy materials, olivine, and what the scientists termed potentially interesting isotopic traces. These believe that these materials were also available during the formation of other objects in our solar system...

" 'We're confident that the things coming out [of Comet Wild 2] are the same as those that went in,' Brownlee told SPACE.com. 'We believe that we collected the most pristine samples of a comet, those that have never been warmed.'

"While further analysis of Tempel 1 revealed water ice on its surface, so far no evidence of water has been detected in the particles. The other sign of water would be the presence of hydrated silicates, which were present in Tempel 1, Brownlee said; but so far none of these have been found in the Stardust samples."

Now, what does THAT signify? Could the particles have been dehydrated by frictional heat when they plowed through the aerogel? But surely in that case they would still show clear structural and mineralogical evidence of having been water-modified?

[Guest_BruceMoomaw_*]

This just in: that IS what they're seriously considering for a Stardust extended mission:
http://www.spaceref.com/news/viewnews.html?id=1103

(I coudn't find anyone who knew anything about it at the Europa Focus Group meeting, and Don Brownlee never replied to my E-mail. According to Av. Week, they've been trying to keep this scheme under wraps.)