Last night, the space probe Stardust attempted to fly through the bright halo of a comet and capture some ancient space dust. Stardust left earth on February 1999 and is expected to return with a thumble full of space dust for analysis on January 2006. I cant wait!

Scientists want to bring samples of the dust particles to Earth for study because they believe these samples represent pristine examples of the building blocks of our solar system, unchanged for 4.6 billion years. They also believe the dust contains many of the organic molecules necessary for life.

NASA released the first of 72 images Stardust took of the nucleus of the comet. The black-and-white photo taken at a distance of about 311 miles showed what looked like a giant frozen meatball pocked with sinkholes. “These are the best pictures ever taken of a comet,” said Principal Investigator Dr. Don Brownlee of the University of Washington, Seattle. “Although Stardust was designed to be a comet sample return mission, the fantastic details shown in these images greatly exceed our expectations.”

This is what the Stardust space probe looks like.