Sunday, January 15, 2006

Real-Life Project SCOOP space probe brings Lord-knows-what to Utah desert

Here's the story from the AP:
Capsule Carrying Comet Dust Lands in Utah

Jan 15, 8:40 AM (ET)
By ALICIA CHANG

DUGWAY PROVING GROUND, Utah (AP) - A space capsule ferrying the first comet dust samples to Earth parachuted onto a remote stretch of desert before dawn Sunday, drawing cheers from elated scientists.

The touchdown capped a seven-year journey by NASA's Stardust spacecraft, which zipped past a comet in 2004 to capture minute dust particles and store them in the capsule.

"It's an absolutely fantastic end to the mission," said Carlton Allen, a scientist with NASA's Johnson Space Center.

A helicopter recovery team located the capsule Sunday and was transferring it to a clean room at the nearby Michael Army Air Field. The capsule will be flown Tuesday to the Johnson Space Center in Houston where scientists will unlock the canister containing the cosmic particles.

Researchers believe about a million samples of comet and interstellar dust - most tinier than the width of a human hair - are locked inside the capsule...

I hope that's ALL that's inside that capsule: don't wanna see this happen, do we?

5 comments:

  1. So correct me if i am wrong. The whole Andromeda Strain story is fiction? I thought in the beginning of the movie it says that this actually happened? So project scoop really did not bring anything dangerous back to our planet?
    What a shame!

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  2. It's a movie. It's fiction. Treat it accordingly.

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  3. i thought it was fact - all the declassification blurb got me hook line and sinker if it IS fiction - nuts

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  4. Yhe book, was even better.

    The first page Carries thei belevable sentience.

    " WARNING " " Do not except from

    courrier, if seal is broken "

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  5. Perhaps before discounting everything in the book and movie one should look into where the information for them came from. One could start by ordering the documents seen on the screen (get the doc numbers) from the Superintendent of Documents, US Government.
    One could become a bit more enlightened.

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