04.10.08
The team responsible for the breakthrough Stardust comet sample return mission has received the Smithsonian's National Air and Space Museum Trophy, the museum's highest honor, in the category of Current Achievement.
The 2008 winners received their awards at a ceremony at the museum in Washington, D.C. on April 3. Established in 1985, the award recognizes outstanding achievements in the fields and history of aerospace science and technology.
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| Samples of aerogel, the material used to capture dust particles as the spacecraft passed near the comet, and a flight suit worn by Stardust project manager Thomas Duxbury of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory on display in the at the National Air and Space Museum building. |
Stardust launched in February 1999 on a two-billion-mile roundtrip to rendezvous with Comet Wild 2, capture comet and interstellar dust, and return a capsule bearing these primordial solar system treasures for analysis here on Earth. Seven years later, the journey ended with the capsule streaking across the sky to a successful landing on U.S. soil in January 2006. Since then, the dust samples have gone to laboratories around the world for scientists to study the chemical composition of the comet and its signature of the early solar system. Dozens of groundbreaking scientific papers based on those samples have been published by science team members.
Tom Duxbury, Stardust's project manager at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, CA, said, "It is great for the team to receive such recognition for our accomplishments, but we understand that significant challenges lie ahead that will take our dedicated attention and focus." What lies ahead for Stardust and its team is a new challenge - a new comet.
"Stardust came through its historic comet Wild 2 flyby and Earth sample return with resources to spare," said Duxbury. "NASA took a look at what was left in the tanks - of both spacecraft and personnel - and decided Stardust should head on out to explore another comet, Tempel 1."
On July 4, 2005, an impactor deployed by another NASA spacecraft -- Deep Impact -- collided with comet Tempel 1 at a speed of about six miles per second. Like Stardust, Deep Impact achieved great strides for cometary science. Now the plan is for the Stardust spacecraft to revisit the site of Deep Impact's triumph. Called Stardust-NExT, for New Exploration of Tempel 1, the mission will employ the Stardust spacecraft's camera, cometary dust analyzer and dust flux monitor during a Feb. 2011 flyby of Tempel 1, where it will observe changes to the surface of the comet since the Deep Impact mission's visit in 2005.
"The samples that Stardust returned to Earth are helping rewrite the very history of our solar system," said Don Brownlee, a scientist at the University of Washington, Seattle, and the Stardust mission's principal investigator. "The samples have been distributed to researchers around the world and their findings are just beginning to come in."
Among the discoveries garnered by Stardust was the finding that comets are a very odd mix of materials that formed at the highest and lowest temperatures that existed in the early solar system. Comets have been cold for billions of years, but their ingredients are remarkable products of both fire and ice. Because the rocky materials in comet Wild 2 formed at such high temperatures, scientists believe that they formed in the hot inner regions of the young solar system and were then transported all the way to beyond the orbit of Neptune.
"Comet Wild 2 is a collection of materials that probably came from all regions of the young solar system and thus it has turned out to be a wonderful "time capsule," said Brownlee. "The instruments and techniques used to study our samples have already greatly improved since we began looking at them in 2006, so the original Stardust mission and its discoveries should continue for years to come."
Among the honors the Stardust team has received since Earth return are: the Aviation Week & Space Technology Program Excellence Award; the Popular Mechanics' Breakthrough Award; and the Rotary National Award for Space Achievement.
Previous Discovery Program missions to be awarded the National Air and Space Museum Trophy Award are the Mars Pathfinder team in 1998 and the NEAR mission team in 2001.
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