Stardust memories

Stardust in meteorites.

Primitive meteorites, interplanetary dust particles, and comets contain dust grains that formed around stars that lived their lives before the solar system formed. These remarkable objects have been intensively studied since their discovery a little over twenty years ago and they provide samples of other stars that can be studied in the laboratory in exquisite detail with modern analytical tool...

Stardust Wild 2 Dust Measurements

McDonnell, A. J. Tuzzolino, T. E. Economou, B. C. Clark, Z. Sekanina, P. Tsou, D. E. Brownlee, PSSRI, The Open University, Walton Hall, Milton Keynes, MK7 6AA, UK, [email protected], Laboratory for Astrophysics and Space Research, Enrico Fermi Institute, University of Chicago, 933 East 56 St, Chicago Ill 60637, USA, Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, 4800 Oak Grov...

Laboratory Studies of Stardust

Stardust Microcrater Residue Compositional Groups

Introduction: Impact craters found across the Stardust foils have preserved residue from the cometary grains [1, 2, 3]. It has been successfully demonstrated that stoichiometric mineral compositions have been preserved in larger craters (e.g. >15 μm) including identified mineral grains [4]. Techniques used have been SEM EDS analyses of residue in-situ within craters and TEM EDS analyses of wafe...

UV-Vis spectroscopy of stardust

NASA’s Stardust mission flew through the coma of comet Wild 2 in January 2004, capturing dust grains as it did so. The grains were returned safely to Earth in January 2006, and are in the process of being distributed to investigators. As members of the Spectroscopy Preliminary Examination Team, we are preparing to analyse Stardust grains. Our contribution is to measure the spectrum of the grain...