Is it true that on the site nasa.gov Discovery mission has been Unveiled on Easter Sunday ?”
Dr. Donald Brownlee, Stardust Principal Investigator Stardust: A Mission With Many Scientific Surprises The primary goal of the Stardust mission was to collect samples of a comet and return them to Earth for laboratory analysis. Comets are ancient bodies of frozen ice and dust that formed beyond the orbit of the most distant planet. They were expected to contain materials that the solar system formed from, preserved in ice for billions of years. When the international team of 200 scientists began examination of the returned particles, we found that the particles were indeed ancient building blocks of the solar system but the nature and origin of the particles was quite unexpected. btn_fullstory.jp g Features Graphic Artist conception of Stardust visiting a comet Stardust Spacecraft to Continue Flying The Stardust-NExT will utilize the existing Stardust spacecraft to flyby Comet Tempel 1 in 2011, and observe changes in the comet since Deep Impact visited it in 2005. link to website.jpg
It was a glorious Easter Sunday morning here at the Kennedy Space Center as Space Shuttle Discovery was unveiled to the clear blue skies of the heavens above. The Rotating Service Structure (RSS) was rolled back this Sunday morning at 9:30 AM to reveal Discovery in anticipation of launch on Monday morning, Apr. 5 at 6:21 AM EDT The rollback of the giant cocoon like structure takes about 25 minutes. This evening the Shuttle Mission management team gave the “GO” to begin the fueling of the cryogenic propellants. Over a half million pounds of liquid oxygen and liquid hydrogen is being loaded into the shuttle’s huge orange colored External Tank as of 9:28 PM tonight ! The loading of fuel takes about three hours.
