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21st Century Complete Guide to the NASA Stardust Comet Sample Return Mission with DVD Video of Entry and Landing (CD-ROM and DVD-VIDEO)


by World Spaceflight News

List Price: $25.00
Available: Usually ships in 24 hours
Sales Rank: 5985107
Studio: Progressive Management
Binding: CD-ROM
Number Of Pages: 30554
Publication Date: February 04, 2006
Publisher: Progressive Management


EDITORIAL REVIEWS

Product Description
This set of two discs, one CD-ROM and one DVD-VIDEO, provides the most comprehensive text and video coverage available on the Stardust comet sample return mission, which arrived safely back in Utah with its precious cargo on January 15, 2006. The DVD-VIDEO contains two hours of coverage of the entry, descent, and landing of the sample return capsule. Launched in 1999, the Stardust spacecraft has circled the Sun a total of three times over seven years. On the way to its comet encounter, it collected interstellar dust on two different solar orbits. On Jan. 2, 2004, Stardust flew past the nucleus of comet Wild 2 at a distance of 240 kilometers (149 miles). During this close flyby, a special collector captured particles of the comet as the spacecraft flew through the coma, or cloud of dust and debris, surrounding Wild 2. The Stardust spacecraft capsule landed in the Department of Defense’s Utah Test & Training Range carrying the mission’s cosmic booty of cometary and interstellar dust samples. Stardust’s trajectory was calculated to allow the spacecraft to fly past Wild 2 at a relatively low speed at a time when the comet is active -- but not too active. The trajectory also minimized the energy needed to launch the spacecraft, allowing for a smaller, less expensive launch vehicle; maximized the time for favorable collection of interstellar dust; and made the spacecraft approach Earth at a relatively low speed when it returns. Stardust began its voyage on Feb. 7, 1999 from Space Launch Complex 17A at Cape Canaveral Air Station, Fla., on a variant of the Delta II launch vehicle known as a Delta 7426, one of a new series of rockets procured under NASA’s Med-Lite program. Launch events occurred in three phases. First, the Delta lifted off and entered a 185- kilometer-high (115-mile) parking orbit; then it coasted for about a half-hour; and finally an upper-stage engine fired to send Stardust out of Earth orbit. Stardust’s first two years of flight carried it on the first of its three orbital loops around the Sun. In January 2000, when Stardust was between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter -- the most distant point from the Sun that it reached during that orbit -- the spacecraft’s thrusters fired to place it on course for a later gravity assist swingby of Earth. As Stardust traveled back inward toward the Sun, it collected interstellar particles flowing through the solar system. From February through May! 2000, the spacecraft deployed its collector to capture these interstellar particles. One part of the collector mechanism called its “B side” faced the incoming interstellar dust stream, while the back side, called the “A side,” was later used for the spacecraft’s dust collection at comet Wild 2. NASA's Stardust sample return mission returned safely to Earth when the capsule carrying cometary and interstellar particles successfully touched down at 2:10 a.m. Pacific time (3:10 a.m. Mountain time) in the desert salt flats of the U.S. Air Force Utah Test and Training Range. "Ten years of planning and seven years of flight operations were realized early this morning when we successfully picked up our return capsule off of the desert floor in Utah," said Tom Duxbury, Stardust project manager at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif. "The Stardust project has delivered to the international science community material that has been unaltered since the formation of our solar system." As a bonus, in addition to the Stardust coverage on the CD-ROM, there is extensive coverage of two other NASA missions: the New Horizons mission to Pluto, and the historic Lunar Prospector mission.
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