Stardust Part II, Deep Impact Revisited? 22
oneill40 writes to tell us New Scientist is reporting that NASA's Stardust spacecraft may be gearing up for another run. Stardust recently made the news by returning samples from the comet Wild 2 and is being looked at to pick up where the Deep Impact mission left off. From the article: "In addition to revealing the comet's interior composition, studies of the crater should shed light on the comet's structure and density. "If the impactor hit something that was very hard, it would produce a smaller crater than if it hit something very soft," Veverka told New Scientist."
Re:Good use of resources... (Score:3, Interesting)
I was skeptical that they'd find anything interesting to do with Stardust when they first announced they were looking for proposals, but I'm pleasantly surprised.
Additionally, the original sample return may also have been captured some extra-solar particles in the aerogel collector on Stardust. Scientists expect to be able to identify these based on how deeply embedded they are (ie, velocity with which they struck the collector). Some of you may recall the Genesis project was supposed to collect particles from our sun's wind. Unfortunately, due to an engineering error, it crashed landed, breaking it's seal and tainting the samples. Extrasolar particles would likely have some similarity to what our own sun kicks out. All this together makes Stardust a fascinating mission.
Interesting bit from the article:
I'm wondering how confident they are which way the comet will be oriented. Isn't it possible that evaporation/ejection of material from its surface can affect the rotation significantly enough to mess up long term orientation predictions?