Active Cosmic Dust Collector

The Stardust mission returned two types of unprecedented extraterrestrial samples: the first samples of material from a known solar system body beyond the moon, the comet 81P/Wild2, and the first samples of contemporary interstellar dust. Both sets of samples were captured in aerogel and aluminum foil collectors and returned to Earth in January 2006. While the analysis of particles from comet Wild 2 yielded exciting new results, the search for and analysis of collected interstellar particles is more demanding and is ongoing.