Things are looking up for stargazers

Speeding spacecraft will look like a giant meteor, render a boom

By Philip Chien

The Portland Tribune, Jan 13, 2006, Updated Oct 30, 2009

NASA’s $212 million Stardust spacecraft is returning to Earth after a whirlwind 2.8 billion-mile tour of the inner solar system and will pass over Oregon early Sunday morning during its return to Earth.

The Stardust spacecraft holds precious cargo Ñ a pinch of particles from the comet Wild-2. It’s the first time materials from deep space will return to Earth since the last Apollo moon landing in December 1972.

The 3-foot-diameter, 101-pound Stardust capsule will re-enter the Earth’s atmosphere over the Pacific Northwest Sunday at 1:57 a.m. Sunday PST. OMSI will be holding a free viewing party from 1:30 a.m. to 4 a.m. in its planetarium, 1945 S.E. Water Ave. It will include video feeds from a NASA observatory in Utah that might have a better view of the re-entry if the skies are overcast in the Portland area.

Don Brownlee of the University of Washington is the chief scientist who came up with the concept of bringing back comet material in the spacecraft. He said, “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.”

When it returns to Earth, Stardust will be traveling at 28,860 miles per hour, the fastest any spacecraft has re-entered the atmosphere. That means the spacecraft will glow white-hot as its heat shield starts to char and burn away. Unlike the superdelicate 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.

Stardust project manager Tom Duxbury said, “As we come in over the western United States this thing will light up the night sky for a brief period of time.”

Tracking the re-entry

NASA’s especially interested in what the re-entry will look like from a wide 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 (http://reentry.arc.nasa. gov/viewingforum.html) with technical data has been set up with recommendations for how to take the best images and where to submit them.

From Portland, Stardust will appear in the south-southwest about a quarter of the way up. It will be rapidly traveling to the east, setting about a minute later. A parachute will open to slow Stardust’s descent into the U.S. Air Force Utah Test and Training Range, southwest of Salt Lake City. The 6.9-year journey ends when the capsule parachutes to a gentle landing at 3:12 a.m. Mountain Standard Time.

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