Don Brownlee
Don Brownlee
grabbed landed piece visited
We visited a comet, grabbed a piece of it, and landed here this morning. It was a real thrill.
almost billion grabbed incredible landed miles piece traveled visited
We traveled almost 3 billion miles in space. We visited a comet, grabbed a piece of it, and it landed here this morning. It's an incredible thrill.
biggest finger impacts
The biggest impacts were big enough to put your little finger in.
convey hard people situations tense
It's hard to convey to people how tense these situations can be.
bright people quite sure
We weren't quite sure how bright it was going to be and some people didn't think we would see anything.
becomes crew far floating galaxy giant intrigued million names outlive people red silicon spacecraft sun
We have a crew onboard of over a million people -- their names are etched in a little silicon chip. As an astrobiology-type person, I'm intrigued by the thought that those names and that spacecraft will far outlive the Earth. When the Sun becomes a red giant and scorches the Earth, that spacecraft and those names will still be floating around the galaxy somewhere.
backyard bringing collected comet course dust lands material particle per primitive square tons year
Each year we have 30 to 40,000 tons of primitive material from comets and asteroids that lands on Earth, and this is about one particle per square meter per day. So during the course of our seven-year mission, there was more comet dust collected in your backyard than what we're bringing home.
angle appeared five half jumping lasted maybe minutes noticed ran red saw supposed tail yelling
Five minutes before it was supposed to come in, we ran outside. I saw this red thing that, at first, I thought was Mars. Then I noticed it was moving, from our angle it appeared to be climbing. Pretty soon, it had this glowing, reddish tail that lasted maybe half a minute. ... We were all yelling and jumping up and down.
collected either form found high hottest normally red samples siberia solar white
We found the hottest samples in the coldest place. These are mineral grains that normally form under high temperature conditions. They were either red hot or white hot grains. Yet they were collected in the Siberia of the solar system.
collected grain
Every grain that we collected has a story to tell.
fantastic quite
We are approaching the end of a quite fantastic voyage.
easier entire parts
This is probably one of the easier parts of the entire mission.
came comet edge formed inner lifetime pluto recently sample solar spent system until
This comet formed at very edge of the solar system ... out by pluto ... and spent all its lifetime out there until recently it came into the inner part of the solar system, where we could sample it.
almost scientific secrets
Some scientific secrets will come out almost immediately.