Wednesday, February 15, 2006
First results from Stardust comet material
Image Credit, NASA/JPL/Peter Tsou
Specks of cometary dust from comet Wild 2 collected by the Stardust mission have been sent out to labs world-wide (check out the webcam of the Stardust sample preparation labs). The Journal Nature has an exciting report from one of the Labs on this dust. Unfortunately, they didn't report the actual findings, as no results will be released until the Lunar and Planetary Science Conference in Houston, Texas, in March this year. However, initial chemical analysis scans using Scanning Electron Microscopy were surprising. The leader of the team said "Whatever it is, it's weird". Now that is a teaser. I will be waiting eagerly for March.
Specks of cometary dust from comet Wild 2 collected by the Stardust mission have been sent out to labs world-wide (check out the webcam of the Stardust sample preparation labs). The Journal Nature has an exciting report from one of the Labs on this dust. Unfortunately, they didn't report the actual findings, as no results will be released until the Lunar and Planetary Science Conference in Houston, Texas, in March this year. However, initial chemical analysis scans using Scanning Electron Microscopy were surprising. The leader of the team said "Whatever it is, it's weird". Now that is a teaser. I will be waiting eagerly for March.