posted January 27, 2006 12:14 AM               

So says Tom Duxbury, Stardust's Project Manager, about his spacecraft's future now that its back on earth. I recently spoke with Duxbury, asking several questions on behalf of collectSPACE.

"The original plan [for the basic sample return capsule] was that after we study the effects of space and the effects of the Earth return, was to have that go to the Air and Space Museum," said Duxbury.

That testing will be done at Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas over the next 6 to 12 months. Core samples may also be taken and sent to Ames Research Center in California, where the heat shield was designed. They are now interested in comparing the predicted results to the actual returns.

There are also engineers and scientists from NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center and Lockheed Martin who want to study the capsule and capitlize on the experience and data it may yield. "We do hope to use this model for other missions in the future," said Duxbury, including sample return missions from Mars.

The capsule will not however, be segmented for distribution to researchers; it will remain intact.

In addition to displaying the Stardust capsule at the National Air and Space Museum, Duxbury's team would like to take the microchip it contains, holding millions of names and signatures, and place it into a computer that could be used by the public to view its contents.

Duxbury is also leading one of the efforts to reuse the main Stardust spacecraft. His desire is to send it back to Comet Tempel 1, which was visited by Deep Impact on July 4, 2005.

"When they flew by, they did not get to see the last part of crater formation."

Duxbury believes that it would be scientifically valuable to return several years after Deep Impact to see the final results of the cratering process and to examine the comet with a different suite of instruments. Stardust was designed to be a comet explorer and its intruments are designed specifically for that purpose.

"Its heritage is still potentially out there in the future," said Duxbury.