Don Brownlee Solar Quotations

We found mineral grains that are considered very high-temperature minerals -- they normally form under extremely high temperature conditions. And yet they were collected in a comet, the Siberia of the solar system.

We did this mission to collect the most primitive materials we could in the solar system. We went to a comet that formed at the edge of the solar system, far from the sun under very cold conditions. We're confident that it was made out of the initial building blocks of our solar system.

We are collecting the actual building blocks the solar system was formed from 4.5 billion years ago. We believe that the particles have a lot of information stored in them.

We're collecting things that are very ancient and even older than our solar system. We are literally reaching for the stars.

This comet formed at very edge of the solar system ... out by pluto ... and spent all its lifetime out there until recently it came into the inner part of the solar system, where we could sample it.

These are literally the building blocks of our planetary system. Personally, I feel a strong attachment to this thing and we should all feel a strong attachment to it because the fact is all the atoms in our bodies -- the carbon atoms and the oxygen, nitrogen, potassium and calcium and so forth -- all those atoms were in stardust rings ... before the solar system formed.

These are literally the building blocks of our planetary system. All of the atoms in our bodies - the carbon atoms, the oxygen, the nitrogen, potassium, calcium and so forth - all of those atoms were in stardust grains like those coming out of the comet now before the solar system formed.

This is a history project. We are going to the edge of the solar system, collecting the original building blocks of the planets and bringing them back to our labs.

We found the hottest samples in the coldest place. These are mineral grains that normally form under high temperature conditions. They were either red hot or white hot grains. Yet they were collected in the Siberia of the solar system.

Remarkably enough, we have found fire and ice. We have found samples in the coldest part of the solar system.

We saw incredible features -- steep cliffs, overhanging cliffs, spires and many other things we had never seen on other solar system bodies.

The fundamental reason for this mission is that we are collecting what we believe are the best preserved samples of the formation of our solar system and they are preserved because they formed these comet bodies beyond the major planets out beyond Neptune.

There are two major possibilities. One that they formed in the innermost, hotter-most regions of our solar system when the sun and planets were forming, and they were thrown out -- all the way out to the Pluto region of the solar system. The other possibility is they were formed around other stars, in hot regions around other stars.

We were stunned when we got to the comet and saw incredible features - steep cliffs, overhanging cliffs, spires and many features which, oddly enough, we had never been seen on other Solar System bodies.

The primary purpose of the Stardust mission was to collect comet dust, the most basic material of the solar system, and bring it back to Earth for study.