Comet dust first analysis
22 February 2006
by Richard
Conan-Davies
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The first ever to analysis of cometary dust delivered to Earth via spacecraft has been carried out by scientists at the Univeristy of Chicago. Examining extraterrestrial material that has fallen to Earth as meteorites has been common but never before NASA's Stardust mission have scientists had access to verified bits of a comet. Lawrence Grossman, Professor in Geophysical Sciences explained that "We think comets make up a huge amount of stuff out in the solar system. We'd like to know the mineral composition of this big component of the solar system that we've never seen before for sure," The comet samples partly consist of several thin slices of one dust grain mounted in epoxy and held on a round copper grid covered by a thin film. They also received a bullet-shaped epoxy plug holding the remainder of the grain. |
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Original press release from EurekaAlert
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