Title:

Stardust- a sample return mission from a Jupiter family comet


Don Brownlee
PI - Stardust Mission
University of Washington


Abstract:

Stardust is a Discovery class mission designed to study materials 
from the Kuiper belt at atomic scale resolution. On January 2, 2004, 
the Stardust spacecraft collected thousands to millions of dust 
particles from comet P81/Wild2.  On January 15, 2005 it will return 
the sample by direct entry and parachute descent into the Utah 
desert. The returned samples will be investigated by scientists 
world-wide using the best nano-scale analytical techniques presently 
available and those that will be developed during the next decade. 
Major goals of the mission are to identify the pre-solar interstellar 
grain content of the sampled comet and to compare the fundamental 
nature of materials that accreted in the Kuiper belt with those that 
accreted just beyond Mars to form meteorite-producing asteroids. It 
is likely that comets preserve the first generation solid building 
materials of the solar nebula accretion disk- reasonable analogs to 
particles in other circumstellar disks.

Although sample return is the primary focus of the mission, the 
recent flyby produced a wealth of data including spectacular images 
of the cometary nucleus. The images reveal a remarkably complex body 
rich in features related both to its former residence in the Kuiper 
belt and its more recent history as a Jupiter family comet.  This 
unusual comet was perturbed into its present orbit during a close 
encounter with Jupiter in 1974.