Stardust probe success

[I, Brian]

Of course, NASA experienced it's other success, with the Stardust probe succeeding in its own dramatic mission to explore an active comet.

Not only do we have a physical sample on return to Earth, but we have our first ever pictures of a comet nucleus.

Here's the NASA site: http://stardust.jpl.nasa.gov/index.html

And here's how the BBC reports it:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/3364419.stm

excerpt:

The Nasa probe Stardust has had a dramatic encounter with Comet Wild-2, passing just 240 km away from the mountainous ball of ice, rock and dust.


The craft sent back startling images of the object and grabbed particles streaming away from its nucleus for return to Earth in two years' time.

The flyby occurred in deep space 389 million km from Earth at 1944 GMT.

Scientists say the probe's data will yield valuable information on the early history of the Solar System.

"The comet co-operated better than we could have expected and the spacecraft worked wonderfully well," said Don Brownlee, of the University of Washington and the principal investigator for the Stardust mission. "We've collected dust from a comet and we're bringing it home for analysis in laboratories all over the world."

[Allyn]

I heard about this one, but then completely forgot about it. I'm glad it's gone off so well, i hope they're successful in getting it back here