PIA02188: Making Celestial Tracks
This image shows the tracks left by two comet particles after they impacted NASA's Stardust spacecraft's comet dust collector. The collector is made up of a low-density glass material called aerogel.
 Mission:  Stardust 
 Spacecraft:  Stardust
 Product Size:  720 x 515 pixels (w x h) 
 Produced By:  University of Washington 
 Full-Res TIFF:  PIA02188.tif (371.4 kB)
 Full-Res JPEG:  PIA02188.jpg (28.8 kB)  

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Original Caption Released with Image:

This image shows the tracks left by two comet particles after they impacted the Stardust spacecraft's comet dust collector. The collector is made up of a low-density glass material called aerogel. Scientists have begun extracting comet particles from these and other similar tadpole-shaped tracks.

Image Credit:
NASA/JPL-Caltech/University of Washington

Image Addition Date:
2006-10-19