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Probe May Have Found Cosmic Dust
from BBC News Online
Scientists may have identified the first specks of interstellar dust in material collected by the US space agency's Stardust spacecraft. A stream of this dust flows through space; the tiny particles are building blocks that go into making stars and planets.
The Nasa spacecraft was primarily sent to catch dust streaming from Comet Wild 2 and return it to Earth for analysis. But scientists also set out to capture particles of interstellar dust.
The material was gathered by the Stardust probe in a seven-year, 4.8-billion-km (2.9 billion miles) interplanetary voyage. It extended a retractable device containing cells filled with a material called aerogel, a porous substance designed to trap dust molecules. A capsule containing the precious samples was then returned to Earth in January 2006.
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