Stardust re-entry
The sample return capsule of the Stardust spacecraft is due to land in a little under 10 hours at 10:05am GMT. Before that, in about four hours, the capsule will be remotely released and head towards the USA, entering the atmosphere at 9:57am GMT. If you live in the western states, you may have a chance of seeing the re-entry - it will be the middle of the night and should look impressive as it slams into the atmosphere at about 48,000 km/hour (28,800 miles/hour). It will be the fastest re-entry of any recorded man-made object. Worth looking out for.
If you live in Florida you shouldn't be disappointed about missing Stardust re-entry as you should get the chance to see the launch of the New Horizons mission as it heads off to Pluto. The launch window is set for the afternoon (local time) on Tuesday. Does anyone out there know the maximum distance away from the launch site that you can still see the launch from?
Comments: Stardust re-entry
I'm about 140 miles away on the other side of the state and I can easily see most launches if the weather is good. http://www.dirtyskies.com/index.php/2005/07/27/is-this-thing-still-on/
Posted by Rob on Sunday 15th Jan 2006 (03:02 UTC)
Duxbury was wearing a flightsuit on NASA TV after re-entry. Nice "Mission Accomplished" refernece.
Posted by Dave on Sunday 15th Jan 2006 (10:45 UTC)
The capsule appears intact and has been returned to the airforce base prior to going to the clan room. Stardust@home anyone?
Posted by Ian Musgrave on Sunday 15th Jan 2006 (12:43 UTC)
The post recovery briefing is scheduled to start in a few minutes time on NASA TV.
Posted by Stuart on Sunday 15th Jan 2006 (14:28 UTC)
[From NASA TV briefing] Everything seems to have gone exactly as planned and the capsule is now in the clean room.
Posted by Stuart on Sunday 15th Jan 2006 (14:34 UTC)
[From NASA TV briefing] The return capsule hit the atmosphere at exactly the right time. Mr Duxbury was just explaining about the re-entry. Apparently a large storm was building up as the capsule was returning. Re-entry happened during a window in the storm - talk about good timing. He also explained that at the point when the drogue chute (before the main parachute) was released, the capsule suddenly slowed down but the TV camera kept heading in the same direction. So the capsule went out of frame while the TV camera slowed down.
Posted by Stuart on Sunday 15th Jan 2006 (14:39 UTC)
[From NASA TV briefing] The aerogel grid - the thing that has collected the particles from the comet and from interstellar space - will be removed next Tuesday.
Posted by Stuart on Sunday 15th Jan 2006 (14:41 UTC)
[From NASA TV briefing] When the capsule landed, it had a 'g-switch' that detected landing and released the parachute. I presume a 'g-switch' is an accelerometer.
Posted by Stuart on Sunday 15th Jan 2006 (14:44 UTC)
[From NASA TV briefing] The capsule apparently bounced when it landed (I think this was at about 10 mph though so probably didn't do any damage). The paint around the edge of the capsule seems to have survived re-entry too. There is a little bit of mud on the nose as the ground was damp.
Posted by Stuart on Sunday 15th Jan 2006 (14:55 UTC)
Note that Ian and Tom have been live-blogging various parts of the re-entry and recovery.
Posted by Stuart on Sunday 15th Jan 2006 (15:00 UTC)
[From NASA TV briefing] The biggest particles expected will be about 1mm in diameter. Typical sizes are expected to be 10-20 microns in size (10-20% diameter of human hair). Once in the lab, these tiny particles will be cut into slices for analysis!
Posted by Stuart on Sunday 15th Jan 2006 (15:04 UTC)
[From NASA TV briefing] The main Stardust spacecraft is still alive and well out in space. There are possibilities for future missions using Stardust as it is still capable of visiting other comets and asteroids. To me it sounds like a good way to make further use of the instruments and it would be much cheaper than a launch.
Posted by Stuart on Sunday 15th Jan 2006 (15:09 UTC)
[From NASA TV briefing] The comet Wild 2 (pronounced Vilt-2 as I and the press conference folks keep forgetting) has previously had a close encounter with Jupiter but has spent most of its life out beyond Pluto. The comet had about two dozen jets of gas being ejected. This shows that the comet is coming apart because of heating by the Sun - more evidence that it hasn't been this far into the solar system for very long.
Posted by Stuart on Sunday 15th Jan 2006 (15:17 UTC)
[From NASA TV briefing] Stardust may not get to visit any other comets/asteroids as it will be in a competition for funding with other projects such as Deep Impact. Its instruments consist of cameras, a dust counter that can work out the particle size and distribution, and a dust mass spectrometer (from Germany). The mass spectrometer could do a chemical ananlysis of further cometary dust particles in situ.
Stardust is designed for a seven year life (that covers launch to now) but has two complete sets of electronics onboard. They have only been using one set up to now so perhaps they could squeeze a further few years from it. There are still about 17kg of propellant left for orbit changes and atitude control.
The briefing has just finished. There will be another briefing on Thursday 19th January.
Posted by Stuart on Sunday 15th Jan 2006 (15:26 UTC)
Via Ian I see that the University of Alabama's Observational Techniques class used a 0.4m telescope to take an image of Stardust before re-entry at a range of 160,000 km.
Posted by Stuart on Sunday 15th Jan 2006 (15:42 UTC)
NASA are looking for volunteers to help them search for interstellar dust particles by downloading and examining microscope images of their dust collector thingy (stop me if I get too technical) on their home PCs. There's a website about it at http://stardustathome.ssl.berkeley.edu/
Posted by Citizen Stuart on Sunday 15th Jan 2006 (22:44 UTC)