The Stardust tank compartment successfully landed

A hull filled with comet dust successfully landed on Earth at 1657 (Hanoi time, January 15). This landing took place after the compartment left Stardust's mother ship this morning, ending the seven-year journey or 4.64 billion kilometers.

The landing is spectacular

The 45kg heavy tank cabin landed at the US Air Force Base in the Utah desert, at the delight of the scientists. With this success, Stardust's mission will allow scientists to study comet samples for the first time. For the first time since 1972, extraterrestrial solid materials have been collected and brought to Earth.

At 12:56 (Hanoi time), Stardust cut off the cables connecting it to the landing compartment when flying over Earth. A minute later, the springs on Stardust pushed the landing compartment off the ship. And Stardust continues to fly away from Earth.

About 4 hours later, the landing chamber landed on Earth's atmosphere at a speed of 46,440km / h - the fastest speed of an artificial object. It is known that people in northern California, Oregon, Idaho, Utah and Nevada can see this landing, if the weather is good.

It is known that the landing compartment has been deployed at a height of 3 km above the ground. Immediately after landing, the spacecraft's chamber was searched by helicopter or motor vehicle. The sample will be delivered by air to the Johnson Space Center in Houston city early next week.

Stardust mission

Stardust's mission began in 1999. It flew around the Sun three times and flew halfway to Jupiter to capture the particles of Comet Wild 1 in January 2004. To capture dust particles, Stardust uses a board shaped like a tennis racket.

The board contains many niches the size of rock and is lined with a porous material called an airgel. Aerogels include pure silicon dioxide and 99.8% of air, which acts to block dust particles but do not alter them.

After the dust is finished, the plank folds down into a bucket-like sack and stays in that position on Stardust during the trip back to Earth. Experts expect these dust particles to be only one tenth the diameter of a human hair.

Scientists believe that comets are the remaining materials from the process of forming planets. They hope that the dust Stardust collects will provide some clues to the Solar System's origin 4.5 billion years ago.

In 2004, the Genesis airship carrying solar ions crashed into Earth when its parachute could not be deployed. After the accident of Genesis and the 2003 shuttle shuttle disaster, the ground control team spent six months examining and examining Stardust's design to make sure no errors were made.

Minh Son