Space and Earth Sciences News

Cosmic grains in NASA collector could reveal atoms that went into making the stars and planets NASA's aptly-named Stardust spacecraft may have returned the first-ever samples of interstellar dust to Earth. Scientists hope to confirm their possible discovery of two dust grains, based upon the sharp eye of a citizen scientist, BBC reports. Scientists don't kid when they say everything comes from stardust. The interstellar dust contains heavy atoms that formed within the fiery stellar furnaces. Those atoms later went on to make other stars, and eventually planets such as Earth. The Stardust spacecraft deployed a dust collector with cells made of aerogel -- a porous material -- so that it could capture dust during a flyby of Comet Wild/2. But some of dust grains may represent interstellar grains, rather than pieces from the dirty snowball of a comet. Stardust dropped off its sample capsule to Earth in January 2006, but has continued on a new four-and-a-half year journey to reach the comet Tempel 1. NA