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Ed Yeates ReportingPieces of stars billions of years old are hurdling towards Utah right now, but never fear, scientists have actually captured them and are bringing them back to Earth inside a spacecraft called Stardust.
As part of its seven year, three billion mile journey, Stardust two years ago passed a comet to snatch some of its particles gathered billions of years ago at the very fringes of the solar system.
Dr. Donald Brownlee, Principal Investigator, University of Washington: "We're using this comet as a library that picked up records of the formation of the solar system and has been storing them far from the sun at very low temperatures for four and a half billion years."
Though Comet Wild 2, photographed during that rendezvous, was moving fast enough by itself, the passing Stardust spacecraft was traveling 13-thousand miles per hour, six times faster than a speeding bullet.
Inside the spacecraft the treasure is hidden. When retrieved it looks almost like an ice cube tray, containing remarkable specimens from the far reaches of space.
Those particles, older than the earth, older than the sun, and smaller than a human hair, were swept up by the unique collector. Inside each tray is an amazing micro porous glass with the lowest density of any solid in the world. In fact, it doesn't even look solid, but more like some ethereal mirage. It's this magical stuff that has captured the comet's dust.
So now, in the wee hours of Sunday morning, Stardust will eject this capsule. Though it will plunge into our atmosphere at nearly 29-thousand miles per hour, deployed parachutes will hopefully lower the payload to Utah's western desert at a mere 10 miles per hour.
Dugway Proving Ground is where it all ends, but where scientists will begin studying this precious cargo. Teams of researchers from universities here and abroad will study the samples, hoping to find clues of the origins of the solar system.
