Links to broadcast quality audio files and transcripts -- Dr. Scott Sandford, astrophysicist at NASA Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, Calif., was interviewed about the Stardust comet sample-return mission – humanity’s first opportunity to study the original material from which our solar system was built. Launched in 1999, the mission is flying to a rendezvous with the Wild-2 (pronounced VILD-TWO) comet in 2004 and is scheduled to return samples of cometary dust to Earth in 2006. The stardust mission is slated to be the first to return a sample from outside the Earth’s moon system. More information about the mission is on the Internet at: http://stardust.jpl.nasa.gov/
This interview was posted on the web April 28, 2003. Sandford provided these comments prior to a talk he gave about the mission at Foothill College, Los Altos Hills, Calif. on April 23.
| For use on: | Description | Size |
| Radio | 16 bit 44.1 kilohertz stereo WAV | 10.3 meg |
| Radio | 320 kbps MP3 | 2.34 meg |
| on-line | mono -56kps MP3 | 419 k |
| on-line | stereo WMA | 737 k |
To Download Files:
From a Macintosh Operating System, click and hold the dominant mouse button to "download link to disk" on your hardrive.
From a Microsoft Windows Operating System, right click on the file and "save the target as" on your hardrive
To find information on a specific player to listen to the audio recording, please refer to our Site Tools Page.Note: Only WAV files play directly from this server. The others must be downloaded to be played on your machine.
7. What do you think we are going to learn from the samples?(1:01 minutes)
Dr. Scott Sandford: "Well, what are we going to learn from these samples? Ahh, we’re not sure, actually, because, of course, no one’s ever gotten a known sample from a comet. However, most people think that comets are made up of very primitive materials – the basic building blocks from which our solar system was made. And that since the comet was made, it hasn’t been altered much. The comets haven’t gotten hot, they haven’t undergone geological processing, and so on. And, so, we suspect that is what we in fact see when we study this dust is get a real sense of what were the starting materials from which our solar system was made. So, it may be that we’ll see a very large mixture of materials. We may see organic hydrocarbons, silicate minerals – you know – various kinds of dirt, basically, all – some of the grains are likely to have exotic isotopic ratios that will give us an indication that we’re looking at materials that aren’t as old as the solar system, but are in fact older than the solar system. In other words, we’ll look at materials that existed before the solar system formed and then got incorporated into the solar system as it was forming without being changed or destroyed."
Related News Release