Scientists All Set For New Year Encounter With A Comet

Launched in February 1999, STARDUST is the first mission designed to bring samples back from a known comet. The study of comets provides a window into the past as they are the best preserved raw materials in the Solar System. The cometary and interstellar dust samples collected will help provide answers to fundamental questions about the origins of the solar system.

Scientists from the Open University and University of Kent have developed one set of sensors for the Dust Flux Monitor Instrument (DFMI) built by the University of Chicago, and the software to analyse the data. The DFMI, part funded by the Particle Physics and Astronomy Research Council (PPARC) will record the distribution and sizes of particles on its journey through the centre, or coma, of the comet.

Professor Tony McDonnell and Dr Simon Green from the Open University's Planetary and Space Science Research Institute (PSSRI), will be at the mission command centre, the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California, when the encounter with Wild 2 begins.

Dr. Green explains "By combining the information about each of the tiny grains of dust captured by STARDUST we will discover more about the formation of stars, planets and our solar system."

Professor Tony McDonnell said "The information derived from the signals will tell us on the night if the dust shield has been critically punctured."

Cometary particles will be captured on a tennis racket like grid which contains a substance called aerogel - the lightest solid in the Universe! This is a porous material that allows the particles to become embedded with minimum damage. This means that on their return to Earth they will be as near as possible to their original state.

Once the samples are captured a clam-like shell closes around them. The capsule then returns to Earth in January 2006 where it will land at the US Air Force Utah Test and Training Range. Once collected, the samples will be taken to the planetary material curatorial facility at NASA's Johnson Space Centre, Houston, where they will be carefully stored and examined.

The Open University team hope to be involved in analysing the samples that return to Earth in January 2006.

UK scientists, including a team from the Open University, are also involved with the European Space Agency's Rosetta Mission which will follow and land on Comet Churyumov-Gerasimenko. This mission is due to be launched on 26th February 2004.

Background information

The distance between Earth and Comet Wild 2 will be 390 million kilometres (242 million miles) at the time of the encounter.

Wild-2 is pronounced Vilt-2. The comet is named after the Swiss discoverer.

STARDUST, is part of NASA's Discovery Programme of low cost, highly focused science missions, was built by Lockheed Martin Astronautics and Operations, Denver, Colorado, and is managed by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory for NASA's Office of Space Science, Washington D.C.

Websites

NASAhttp://stardust.jpl.nasa.gov

Open Universityhttp://pssri.open.ac.uk/missions/index.htm

The Particle Physics and Astronomy Research Council (PPARC) is the UK's strategic science investment agency. It funds research, education and public understanding in four broad areas of science - particle physics, astronomy, cosmology and space science.

PPARC is government funded and provides research grants and studentships to scientists in British universities, gives researchers access to world-class facilities and funds the UK membership of international bodies such as the European Organisation for Nuclear Research, CERN, the European Space Agency and the European Southern Observatory. It also contributes money for the UK telescopes overseas on La Palma, Hawaii, Australia and in Chile, the UK Astronomy Technology Centre at the Royal Observatory, Edinburgh and the MERLIN/VLBI National Facility.