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Hot Topic
Solar System
Meteorites, Comets and Asteroids
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Cracking Open a Vault
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| Topic: Meteorites, Comets and Asteroids |
01/23/06 |
| Travel with Aaron Gronstal on a drilling expedition in Chesapeake Bay, the site of a 35 million-year-old impact crater. This portion of his journal is part 2 of a 4-part series. |
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Veritable Covering of Dust
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| Topic: Meteorites, Comets and Asteroids |
01/22/06 |
| Scientists from the California Institute of Technology (Caltech), Southwest Research Institute® (SwRI®), and Charles University in the Czech Republic have made the first positive link between a breakup event in the main asteroid belt and a large quantity of interplanetary dust particles deposited on Earth. |
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Dissecting Stardust
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| Topic: Meteorites, Comets and Asteroids |
01/20/06 |
| When the Stardust sample return capsule returned safely home, mission scientists breathed a sigh of relief. When they opened the capsule, they gasped in delight. Now, they are whistling a happy tune as they examine the many microscopic bits of comet dust. |
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Stardust: Cometary Paydirt
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| Topic: Meteorites, Comets and Asteroids |
01/19/06 |
| Scientists at the Johnson Space Center in Houston were excited and awed by what they saw when the sample-return canister from the Stardust spacecraft was opened. Stardust returned to Earth in a spectacular re-entry early Sunday after a 7-year mission to collect particles from comet Wild 2. The comet dates from the formation of the solar system 4.6 billion years ago. |
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Stardust Safely Home
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| Topic: Meteorites, Comets and Asteroids |
01/15/06 |
| The Stardust mission ended not with a bang Sunday morning, but with the soft thud of the sample return capsule parachuting down to a muddy Utah field. The capsule contains interstellar dust particles and samples of the comet Wild 2. |
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Sampling Stardust on Sunday
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| Topic: Meteorites, Comets and Asteroids |
01/13/06 |
| This weekend, the Stardust spacecraft will return to Earth after a 7-year, 2.88-billion-mile journey. |
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Stardust's Return
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| Topic: Meteorites, Comets and Asteroids |
12/22/05 |
| Samples of the comet Wild 2 will come down to Earth on January 15, 2006. But what kind of shape will they be in? Worries about the sample return capsule's parachutes - and memories of the Genesis mission - add nail-biting drama to the event. |
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Long-Distance Troubleshooting
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| Topic: Meteorites, Comets and Asteroids |
12/13/05 |
| Japanese officials are struggling to fix a horde of problems plaguing the Hayabusa space mission in time to begin its journey back to Earth with or without a package of specimens that were supposed to have been collected from the surface of asteroid Itokawa late last month. |
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The Little Spacecraft That Could
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| Topic: Meteorites, Comets and Asteroids |
11/29/05 |
| With a maneuver compared to landing a jumbo jet in a moving Grand Canyon, Japan's Hayabusa spacecraft touched down on the surface of the asteroid Itokawa and collected a sample. The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) announced the success several hours after its bird had flown. |
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Icy Dirtballs not Dirty Snowballs
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| Topic: Meteorites, Comets and Asteroids |
10/15/05 |
| Observations of Comet 9P/Tempel 1 made by ESA's Rosetta spacecraft after the Deep Impact collision suggest that comets are 'icy dirtballs', rather than 'dirty snowballs' as previously believed. |
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