Stardust Update - January 25, 2006

http://stardust.jpl.nasa.gov/news/status/060125.html

Stardust Status Report
Dr. Peter Tsou
Stardust Deputy Principal Investigator
January 25, 2006

Since the Sample Canister has been delivered to the STARDUST cleanroom
at Johson Space Center (JSC) on January 17th, the Preliminary
Examination Team (PET) along with JSC Curatorial staff have been making
good progress toward processing the returned samples. Everything has
proceeded smoothly; in fact, we are ahead of our planned schedule on
several fronts. The Principal Investigator, Deputy Principal
Investigator and several subteam leads have worked 8:00 am until near
midnight for the last two days. We have removed many aerogel fragments
and found many particles in them; removed 7 pieces of aluminum foil and
found very many small craters in them; removed several particles from
the fragments and examined them by IR; microtomed several particles;
remove two Wild 2 aerogel cells from the tray; and sliced one of the
removed aerogel cell with the harmonic saw.

Sometimes we have up to 7 teams working in parallel each day; several
of
the the PET members have worked from 8:00 am till near midnight in the
last two days. Prepared samples will be distributed to PET subteam
members today.

Images

[Aerogel Tile 115]
http://stardust.jpl.nasa.gov/images/tsou_060124a.jpg

Looking down on Aerogel Tile 115. Impact craters from the larger
particles are circled.


[Ejecta in Aerogel]
http://stardust.jpl.nasa.gov/images/tsou_060124b.jpg

Spectacular image of a comet particle that had penetrated the aluminum
foil holding the aerogel block, leaving an impact crater in the foil
and
ejecta in the aerogel.