Comments on: Stardust Ends Its Mission

By: jake

jake — Sun, 27 Mar 2011 00:48:38 +0000

My name, as well as the names of my family members (not all of whom are still alive), is on a microchip on Stardust. So this news is a bit emotional for someone like myself who is both sentimental and easily awestruck by the mere notion of the cosmos.

By: daveg

daveg — Fri, 25 Mar 2011 21:23:57 +0000

The spacecraft will remain in orbit around the sun, "forever", or at least as close to forever as we can imagine. In the next 100 years it will not come closer than 1.5 million miles to Earth's orbit. Plus, burn up / break up analysis done before the sample return in 2006 concluded that except for some small pieces of titanium, the spacecraft would vaporize in the atmosphere and not reach the surface. Since any future return to Earth will be at much higher velocities than in 2006, you can rest assured none of it will survive to reach the surface.
But in any case, it ain't comin' close to us ever again.
As far as space junk litering the solar system? Collisions in the asteroid belt probably create 10,000 times more debris in a week. One more bit of material the size of a phone booth, will never be noticed. Literally. You'd have to be pretty close to even spot it again.

By: heironymous

heironymous — Fri, 25 Mar 2011 20:09:44 +0000

@oldebabe

The Vulcans find it – and calculating it’s trajectory come to Earth to initiate First Contact.

By: Alex Besogonov

Alex Besogonov — Fri, 25 Mar 2011 19:03:38 +0000

This spacecraft is not on the Earth’s orbit. And it’s faaaar too early before we start worrying about space junk on the scale of the Solar System.

By: oldebabe

oldebabe — Fri, 25 Mar 2011 18:59:09 +0000

So, what happens now to this `retired’ equipment? Is it just left out there somewhere, becoming more space junk? No plans for it to return to earth? No info re: that I can find…