LIVERMORE, Calif. — Particulate materials captured from the comet Wild 2 have revealed new clues about the birth of our solar system. The findings counter some basic theories about how the solar nebular is gently collapsing inward to form the sun and the planets.
A track of comet dust captured in aerogel, the Livermore-developed material that was used aboard the Stardust spacecraft to trap cometary particles.
The thousands of samples of dust gathered by the Stardust spacecraft mission tell a story of a comet that formed in the Kuiper Belt, outside the orbit of Neptune, and only recently entered the inner regions of the solar system.
Wild 2 spent most of its life orbiting in the Kuiper Belt, far beyond Neptune, and in 1974 it had a close encounter with Jupiter that placed it into its current orbit. The Stardust spacecraft’s seven-year mission returned to Earth earlier this year with particles that are the same material that accreted, along with ice, to shape the comet about 4.57 billion years ago, when the sun and planets formed.
But during its lifetime, Wild 2 gathered material that formed much closer to the sun.
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