Donald Brownlee
Donald Brownlee
Donald Eugene Brownleeis a professor of astronomy at the University of Washingtonand the principal investigator for NASA's Stardust mission. His primary research interests include astrobiology, comets, and cosmic dust. He was born in Las Vegas, Nevada...
comet full opened yesterday
We opened the capsule yesterday and it's just full of comet dust.
formed hottest regions solar
If it was formed in our solar system, then it had to be transported from the hottest regions to the coolest.
bit dozen hair human larger particles prediction size
The prediction was that we would get a dozen particles larger than human hair size and one particle a little bit larger than a millimeter.
billion blocks building earth examine fantastic farthest formed solar soon system traveled
We're approaching the end of a fantastic voyage. This is the farthest anything from Earth has traveled and come back. Soon we'll be able to examine the building blocks that formed the solar system 4.6 billion years ago.
half mass size
Our capsule is half the size and one-fourth the mass of Genesis,
either found siberia solar
When they formed, they were either red-hot or white-hot and we found them in the Siberia of the solar system.
extremely fire formed found high remarkably samples solar system
Remarkably enough, we have found fire and ice. We've found samples from the coldest part of the solar system that have mineral grains formed under extremely high temperatures.
fire found remarkably
Remarkably enough, we have found fire and ice.
comet history people planet view
This was our first view of the comet dust. We are the first people in the history of the planet to see comet dust.
huge lots small
It exceeds all expectations. It's a huge success. We can see lots of impacts. There are big ones, there are small ones.
huge
It exceeds all expectations. It's a huge success.
exceeded grandest larger million particles
It exceeded all of our grandest expectations. We should have more than 1 million particles larger than 1 micron in diameter.
atoms billion bodies comet earth far four half library low picked records solar stardust sun system using virtually
Virtually all of the atoms in our bodies and in the Earth were in interstellar grains - stardust grains - before the solar system formed. We're using this comet as a library that picked up records of the formation of our solar system, and has been storing them far from the sun at very low temperatures for four and a half billion years.
brought direct mission particles planet relationship selves stressed
We have always stressed in this mission that we are stardust. Our planet and even our selves have a direct relationship to the particles we brought back.