Wow. Stuff this like is so freakin' amazing. link Spacecraft survives close encounter with comet 'Stardust' to collect particles that could unlock secrets of the universe By Jeordan Legon CNN Friday, January 2, 2004 Posted: 3:55 PM EST (2055 GMT) (CNN) -- After traveling five years and 2.3 billion miles, a speeding NASA space probe pounced on the shimmering tail of a comet Friday, and appeared to trap tiny space dust to bring back to Earth without losing contact with mission control. At 2:44 p.m. ET today, the Stardust spacecraft reached its closest point with the massive chunk of ice and rock known as the Wild 2 Comet, getting within 200 miles at a relative speed of 13,645 mph, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration said. At that point, the craft made a turn, pointing a camera at the nucleus of the comet and snapping pictures of the dark mass. The comet was also expected to stretch its robotic arm to trap comet dust in a tennis-racket-shaped catcher filled with a material called aerogel. Everything appeared to go well, but it could take about 30 hours for the data to be beamed back to Earth confirming the collection of the space particles, NASA said. "The signal is coming in and we've passed the closest approach point without any injury," said asteroid expert Don Yeomans, from NASA's Jet Propulsion Lab. The hope is that the dust, which has been lingering in the cold of space for billions of years, could provide clues to how the universe formed -- including the stars, planets and even our solar system. "In recent decades, spacecraft have passed fairly close to comets and provided us with excellent data," said Dr. Don Brownlee of the University of Washington, principal investigator for the Stardust mission. "Stardust, however, marks the first time that we have ever collected samples from a comet and brought them back to Earth for study." Surviving the close encounter 242 million miles from Earth with the Wild 2 -- pronounced Vild 2 -- wasn't easy. Scientists prepared the refrigerator-sized craft to be pelted with rocks and other debris travelling six times faster than the speed of bullets. The Stardust was protected by two bumpers in the front, guarding its solar panels, and another shield on the probe's body. "We've flown through the worst of it and we're still in contact with our spacecraft," said Tom Duxbury, Stardust program manager. "We can breathe easy," he said, shaking hands with fellow scientists in NASA's Jet Propulsion Lab in Pasadena, California. After gathering the particles, the collector was expected to fold down into a capsule, programmed to close like a clamshell and get ready to make its return trip to Earth. In January of 2006, the capsule is scheduled to detach from the craft and make a soft landing in the Utah desert, while the $200 million Stardust mission returns to space. The capsule could also bring back particles that it collected from February through May 2000, when Stardust passed through a region where interstellar particles flow through the solar system. "The samples that we collect are extremely small, 10 to 300 microns in diameter, and can only be adequately studied in laboratories with sophisticated analytical instruments," Brownlee said. If the gathering of the dust succeeds, researchers should start seeing some reports back on Earth in the next 30 hours. After the flyby, a dust counter was set to signal Stardust mission control with the size and number of particles gathered. Another gadget is set to analyze and report the composition of the matter. And scientists hope to receive black-and-white pictures of the comet's core. But the mission's biggest promise remains the return of the space particles to Earth. Researchers hope the unique chemical and physical information locked within the comet's dust samples, no bigger than a thumbnail, will teach them whether comets or interstellar dust provided the water or organic material necessary to form life. Comets, possibly the oldest bodies in the solar system, could contain a record of the original material that formed the sun and planets 4.5 billion years ago. Interstellar particles, also gathered by the Stardust mission, consist of most of the known elements and include complex carbon structures. Their exact origin remains a mystery but scientists think they are linked to young stars.
Great irony in the fact that a guy named "coma" posts a thread about a comet... unless of couse he's an astronomer/astrophysicist or something.
Ice -> water -> Life ok. Let's work backwards from the above theory. land animals <- Water animals <- DNA forms Life <- Frozen DNA melts <- Frozen DNA desposited on Earth in blocks of comet ice <- Frozen DNA carried by Comet safely across universe <- Frozen block of DNA Scattered across the universe in some kind of explosion <- Frozen block of DNA exists. It basically tells me that if NASA were to plot ice movement thru the universe it could then determine where the highest concentration of it exists. Or where the begining of life might have occured. That is all good. But Now let's pretend that were all true. That some block of DNA was so cold that it shattered-spread across space, and formed life. Where would you typically find such blocks of frozen DNA? In terms of what we know on earth, these frozen blocks of DNA are often found floating in liquid nitrogen. Which would lead me to believe that scientists could fathom the possibility that life also started in a nitrogen rich area. In a cold-liquid-Nitrogen environment. That may be easier to find than ice. If you bring that full circle. It means that if you have liquid nitrogen suspended in a vaccuum, with frozen DNA (or the elements of DNA suspended), and let it shatter due to the frozen DNA hitting each other. You have the possibility for creating life in that vaccum. Sit on that one and spin. Ok. time to watch some football! Go Titans.
