Comet Wild 2 looks like asteroid to NASA Stardust spacecraft

William Atkins
Friday, 25 January 2008 20:37

Science - Space

They also did not find materials that they would have thought were contained in cometary interplanetary dust particles. They didn’t find two silicate materials, along with other primitive materials such as presolar stardust grains from stars, within the comet.

Right now, scientists studying the samples can only conjecture where Comet Wild 2 came from originally.

It could be an object from the inner asteroid belt of the solar system that got ejected into an orbit at the edge of the solar system. Or, it could have originally been smaller pieces from the inner solar system that later were ejected to the outer solar system and formed into the larger comet.

Their discovery lends credence to the statement that there is much overlap in the composition of comets and asteroids. More research will undoubtedly be performed.

In fact, the Stardust mission has been renamed NExT, for New Exploration of Tempel 1, in a mission to investigate Comet 9P/Tempel 1, a comet that was previously impacted by the Deep Impact spacecraft on July 4, 2005. It will flyby Tempel 1 on February 14, 2011.

The article “Stardust's Big Surprise” at the NASA/Jet Propulsion Laboratory Stardust home webpage contains much information on the Stardust mission to Comet Wild 2.