Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory | 2014 Aug 14
The first analysis of space dust collected by a special collector onboard NASA’s Stardust mission and sent back to Earth for study in 2006 suggests the tiny specks, which likely originated from beyond our solar system, are more complex in composition and structure than previously imagined.
The analysis, completed at a number of facilities including the U.S. Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Lab (Berkeley Lab) opens a door to studying the origins of the solar system and possibly the origin of life itself.
“Fundamentally, the solar system and everything in it was ultimately derived from a cloud of interstellar gas and dust,” says Andrew Westphal, physicist at the University of California, Berkeley’s Space Sciences Laboratory and lead author on the paper published this week in Science. “We’re looking at material that’s very similar to what made our solar system.”
Westphal, who is also affiliated with Berkeley Lab’s Advanced Light Source, a DOE Office of Science User Facility where some of the research was conducted, and his 61 co-authors found and analyzed a total of seven grains of possible interstellar dust and presented preliminary findings. All analysis was non-destructive, meaning that it preserved the structural and chemical properties of the particles. While the samples are suspected to be from beyond the solar system, he says, potential confirmation of their origin must come from subsequent tests that will ultimately destroy some of the particles. ...
Seven tiny grains captured by Stardust likely visitors from interstellar space
University of California, Berkeley | 2014 Aug 14
Stardust Discovers Potential Interstellar Space Particles
NASA | JPL-Caltech | Stardust | 2014 Aug 14
Evidence for interstellar origin of seven dust particles collected by the Stardust spacecraft - Andrew J. Westphal et al
- Science 345(6198) 786 (15 Aug 2014) DOI: 10.1126/science.1252496