Stardust Status Report
January 25, 2006
Dr. Peter Tsou
Stardust Deputy Principal Investigator
Since the Sample Canister has been delivered to the STARDUST
cleanroom at Johnson Space Center (JSC) on January 17th, the
Preliminary Examination Team (PET) along with JSC Curatorial
staff have been making good progress toward processing the
returned samples. Everything has proceeded smoothly;
in fact, we are ahead of our planned schedule on several fronts. The
Principal Investigator, Deputy Principal Investigator and several subteam leads
have worked 8:00 am until near midnight for the last two days. We have removed
many aerogel fragments and found many particles in them; removed 7 pieces of aluminum
foil and found very many small craters in them; removed several
particles from the fragments and examined them by IR; microtomed
several particles; removed two Wild 2 aerogel cells from the tray;
and sliced one of the removed aerogel cell with the harmonic saw.
Sometimes we have up to 7 teams working in parallel each day; several
of the the PET members have worked from 8:00 am till near midnight in
the last two days. Prepared samples will be distributed to PET
subteam members today.
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