Posted on Monday 23 January 2006

It's a cool thing that the NASA Stardust space probe finally got back safe and sound from its seven year mission to a comet. From the time of its launch in February 1999 to its re-entry into the atmosphere last week, the craft has travelled nearly 5 billion kilometres and and has passed directly through the tail of Wild 2, a comet that orbits between Jupiter and Mars. Things like this don't always work so smoothly for NASA.

During its mission, the spacecraft collected samples from the comet as well as interplanetary space dust and from the looks of what has been returned the scientists are pretty happy with the results. Comets are an interesting subject because it is thought that most of the Earth's organic building blocks and water (i.e. most of you and most of me) originated from comets which rained down on the young planet. Sampling this dust in its pristine state is an important part of working out make up of the early solar system.



The thing was one of those early web phenomenon. Back in 1998 I fed my name into a web page at the NASA web site (along with about a million or so other people). The names were then engraved on to two sets of chips using a photo-lithographic process. Each set was then attached to a different part of the probe, one of the sets returned with it last week but the other set was left in orbit. So I can also say that another copy of my name is still out there, orbiting the Sun probably for a few billion years or so. Perhaps it will still be there long after the Sun has burnt the Earth to a crisp (in about 6 billion years). Yes, that is pretty cool also.


Okay, it's just for vanity, I know.

But I do think NASA achieved its original marketing goal with this one: to create a sense of ownership in the project. Not that I'm an American tax payer or anything but seriously, it's that little thing that encouraged me to keep informed about Stardust's progress all this time. And, yes, I've been waiting all this time to skite and carry on like a pork chop about it.

So did you put your name down as well? Or have you signed up for the new DAWN space probe? It's launching this May for a journey through the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter. The mission highlight will be a visit to largest and most mysterious of the asteroids, Ceres, which it will reach sometime around 2015.