Stardust (spacecraft)

The project to create an automatic interplanetary station for the study of a comet was launched in 1995 as part of the NASA Discovery program. "Stardust" became the first American AMC, specially created for the study of the comet and the delivery of comet matter to Earth .

The spacecraft was designed and manufactured by Lockheed Martin Astronautics (LMA). The cost of work amounted to 128.4 million dollars . Another $ 37.2 million was spent on management, which was carried out by the LMA Control Center with the support of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL).

The 132 cells of the apparatus's return capsule were filled with silica- based airgel . This substance is characterized by ultra-low density, so the airgel is able to slow down particles flying at high speed without overheating them, making it possible to prevent the destruction of organic molecules if they end up on these particles.

The launch of the station was delayed for a day relative to the originally scheduled time and took place on February 7, 1999 at 21:04:15 UTC from the launch site SLC-17A of the US Air Force base at Cape Canaveral using the Delta-2 launch vehicle 7426.

The launch scheme provided for an intermediate launch into an orbit of an artificial Earth satellite . 28 minutes after the launch, the third stage of the launch vehicle took off, after which the vehicle's rotation was canceled with the help of the onboard engines, and after 4 minutes the ship’s solar batteries were turned and focused on the Sun. After 51 minutes from the start, the station’s signal was received by the antenna of the Remote Space Communication Network (DSN) in Canberra .

The device received the international registration designation in the US Space Command catalog - 1999-003A, number 25618. After its fourth launch, the second stage of the launch vehicle remained in near-earth orbit ( inclination : 22.48 °, height : 292 × 6817 km, orbital period : 163 , 8 min . The third stage of the Delta reached the second cosmic velocity and entered the interplanetary trajectory.

On February 8, 1999, at 17:16 AMC passed 53,400 km from the Moon ^[1] , and by January 2, 2004, the device reached its goal, moving closer to comet 81P / Wilda (Wild 2) at a distance of 240 km . A detailed photograph of the surface of the comet was carried out, samples of the substance from the comet's tail were collected and other ^{[ what? ]} scientific research.

In addition to the main task, the device took photographs of the Moon, and also on November 2, 2002, approached a distance of about 3000 km with a small asteroid (5535) Annafranc , located in the main asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter , where he took more than 70 photographs of the surface of this celestial body. In addition to cometary particles, the apparatus collected samples of cosmic dust .

On January 15, 2006, a capsule with samples of cometary substance returned to Earth. At record speed for return vehicles - 12.9 km / s - it entered the atmosphere of the Earth and successfully landed in the desert of Utah .

After opening the capsule, it became clear that the mission was completed successfully - about 30 large and small particles of cometary matter were captured.

During its flight, the probe overcame more than 4.6 billion km (a record distance for the return unit ).

Pre-processing

The project allotted 6 months to the initial processing and classification of samples delivered by the “Stardust” apparatus. In February, NASA published the first report of Dr. Peter Zou from Caltech about the preliminary results of the processing of airgel fragments with particle prints. Following the initial series of airgel processing using an x-ray tomograph using a special technology previously developed at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory , the first keyplate was made ( keystone ) ^[2] - an airgel microsection with a particle trace. Such “plates” after creation could be studied with the help of various analyzing electronic tools.

Chemical elements magnesium , aluminum , chromium , nickel , manganese , copper , gallium and an isotope of iron ⁶⁰ Fe, possessing a relatively short half-life ( 2.6 Ma ), were found in dust fragments extracted by the probe.

Stardust @ home

NASA asked the Internet community to take part in the analysis of the millions of images that were supposed to be done under a microscope while studying the capsule filler. For this purpose, the University of California Laboratory of Space Science developed the project Stardust @ home ^[3] . It is similar to network distributed computing projects (for example, SETI @ home ), but, unlike them, instead of using the computational resources provided by volunteers, the help of volunteers themselves is used to study the photos, that is, they are related to civil science projects ^[4] . August 1, 2006 the project began work on the network.

Thanks to the project in 2010, one of the fragments of cosmic dust was found. She was found by Bruce Hudson from Canada. According to Hudson’s wish, the first particle of interstellar dust got its own name Orion.

After the end of the main Stardust mission, NASA specialists sent the device to the comet 9P / Tempel (Tempel 1), which in 2005 was examined by the Deep Impact spacecraft, to film changes in the comet's surface caused by a reset to pound projectile "Impactor". The extended mission was called NExT (from New Exploration of Tempel 1 ).

On February 14, 2011, Stardust got close to comet 9P / Tempel to 181 km and took 72 pictures ^[5] .

After completing the NExT program, the device remained in good condition, but the depletion of fuel reserves made it impossible to continue its operation. March 25, 2011 at 2:00 МSK "Stardust" began the last maneuver in which he burned the remaining fuel. After this, the transmitter transmitters were turned off ^[6] .

• " Hayabusa "
• " Rosetta "
• Deep Space 1

• Official site of the project (eng.)
• Stardust @ home - facts about the project, questions and answers (English) (inaccessible link) . Archived February 15, 2006.
• The article "Secrets of Interstellar Clouds" - about the Stardust mission in particular