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| My Opinon is No! |
 Twilight of
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0 | July 18, 2009 |
| Weigh in... your opinion, that is |
Feiruz
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0 | June 5, 2008 |
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Killa Cham
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1 | December 29, 2006 |
| Telomolecular Corp |
Killa Cham
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1 | July 13, 2006 |
| C-R-Newsletter #38 |
Mike
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0 | March 1, 2006 |
How Aerogel captures 'Stardust'
"The aerogel aboard the Stardust Spacecraft is fitted into a "tennis racket" shaped collector. This is unfolded from the protective Sample Return Capsule to expose it to space during flight. One side of the collector will be faced towards the particles in Comet Wild 2, while the reverse, or B side, will be turned to face the streams of interstellar dust encountered during its journey.
When hypervelocity particles are captured in aerogel they produce narrow cone-shaped tracks that are hollow, and can easily be seen in the highly transparent aerogel by using a stereomicroscope. This cone is largest at the point of entry, and the particle is held intact at the point of the cone. This provides a method for determining which direction the dust came from, and is the basis of the approach of using single slabs of aerogel to collect both cometary and interstellar dust from both sides.
After the encounter with Comet Wild 2, the aerogel collector will be retracted into the Sample Return Capsule (SRC) and returned to Earth for detailed analysis by scientists at the NASAs Johnson Space Center." - from www.nasa.gov/mission_pag...l-index.html
When hypervelocity particles are captured in aerogel they produce narrow cone-shaped tracks that are hollow, and can easily be seen in the highly transparent aerogel by using a stereomicroscope. This cone is largest at the point of entry, and the particle is held intact at the point of the cone. This provides a method for determining which direction the dust came from, and is the basis of the approach of using single slabs of aerogel to collect both cometary and interstellar dust from both sides.
After the encounter with Comet Wild 2, the aerogel collector will be retracted into the Sample Return Capsule (SRC) and returned to Earth for detailed analysis by scientists at the NASAs Johnson Space Center." - from www.nasa.gov/mission_pag...l-index.html
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