NASA’s $212 million Stardust spacecraft is returning to Earth on Sunday after a whirlwind 2.8-billion-mile tour of the inner solar system, and it will be visible from Washington state during its return.
The 3-foot diameter, 101-pound Stardust capsule is expected to re-enter the Earth’s atmosphere over the Pacific Northwest at 1:57 a.m. It will be traveling at 28,860 miles per hour, the fastest any spacecraft has re-entered the Earth’s atmosphere.
The Stardust spacecraft, launched Feb. 7, 1999, holds a precious cargo: a pinch of particles from the comet Wild 2.
University of Washington astronomy professor Don Brownlee is the chief scientist who came up with the concept.
| WEB SITES stardust.jpl.nasa.gov NASA’s home page for information on the project.Technical data to help amateur astronomers take images of the reentry. |
“Locked within the cometary particles is unique chemical and physical information that could be the record of the formation of the planets and the materials from which they were made. (We’re) sampling the building blocks of the solar system,” he said.
“As we come in over the Western United States this thing will light up the night sky for a brief period of time,” Stardust project manager Tom Duxbury said.
During re-entry, the spacecraft will glow white-hot as its heat shield starts to char and burn away.
Unlike the super-delicate thermal tiles on the space shuttle, which absorb heat and are reusable, a heat shield gradually burns away to remove the heat while protecting the contents inside. The same high tech materials in Stardust’s heat shield are planned for use on NASA’s future Crew Exploration Vehicle, so NASA’s hoping to obtain data on how well the heat shield performs.
NASA’s especially interested in what the re-entry will look like from a variety of locations. A specially instrumented DC-8 aircraft will track the re-entry, and NASA’s encouraging amateur astronomers to videotape or take photos of the re-entry.
A Web site with plenty of technical data has been set up with recommendations on how to take the best images and where to submit them (reentry.arc.nasa.gov/viewingforum.html).
Stardust will appear just above the horizon in the south at 1:57 a.m. It will be rapidly traveling to the east southeast and will set about a minute later.
Under the best circumstances and viewing conditions, the re-entry will be bright enough to cast a shadow on the ground. In astronomical terms it will reach negative-7 magnitude, and be 1,500 times as bright as the brightest stars in the sky.
Stardust’s parachute will open to slow its descent into the U.S. Air Force Utah Test and Training Range, southwest of Salt Lake City, ending its journey of almost seven years.
Even if the weather doesn’t cooperate, some space enthusiasts are still hoping to observe the re-entry through other means. If the night is quiet then it may be possible to hear a sonic boom, sounding like a distant thunderclap.
Some ham radio operators are going to try to bounce a signal off the super-hot ionized trail. Some hams will point their antennas toward the spacecraft and transmit signals while others will listen for those transmissions from distant states.
Other hobbyists are going for the simple approach. Take an old television set and hook up an ordinary antenna like a pair of rabbit ears. Tune the TV to an unused station in your area and watch. With any luck you’ll see images from distant stations for a short period as their signals bounce off of the re-entry trail.
Viewing the re-entry isn’t the first time NASA’s encouraged the public to participate in the Stardust project. The spacecraft has a pair of microchips with more than a million etched names. One microchip is in the capsule that is returning to Earth, the other is in the spacecraft bus that will remain in space.
NASA’s considering reusing the spacecraft bus for additional science. Ultimately, in a million years or so, it will either crash into one of the solar system’s planets or be ejected out of the solar system.
“As an astrobiology person, I’m intrigued by the thought that those names on the spacecraft will far outlive the Earth,” Brownlee said. “Those names will still be floating around the galaxy – somewhere.”
Philip Chien is the author of “Columbia – Final Voyage,” the story of the mission and the people on Columbia’s last space shuttle mission, due to be released this winter from Springer Books.
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