Donald Brownlee Quotations

We're in excellent shape. We've done almost everything we have to do in the entire mission...only thing left is to come into the Earth.

We're seeing a variety of things that we know absolutely come from a comet.

We were totally overwhelmed by the ability to actually see this so quickly and so straightforwardly.

We're approaching the end of a fantastic voyage. This is the farthest anything from Earth has traveled and come back. Soon we'll be able to examine the building blocks that formed the solar system 4.6 billion years ago.

If it was formed in our solar system, then it had to be transported from the hottest regions to the coolest.

When they formed, they were either red-hot or white-hot and we found them in the Siberia of the solar system.

This was our first view of the comet dust. We are the first people in the history of the planet to see comet dust.

Last Sunday, after seven years in space traveling nearly three billion miles, Stardust landed in the Great Salt Lake Desert with a treasure from when the solar system formed 4.6 billion years ago. We should have more than one million particles larger than one micron in diameter.

Our capsule is half the size and one-fourth the mass of Genesis,

Remarkably enough, we have found fire and ice. We've found samples from the coldest part of the solar system that have mineral grains formed under extremely high temperatures.

Remarkably enough, we have found fire and ice.

It exceeds all expectations. It's a huge success. We can see lots of impacts. There are big ones, there are small ones.

It exceeds all expectations. It's a huge success.

It exceeded all of our grandest expectations. We should have more than 1 million particles larger than 1 micron in diameter.

We can tell the difference, absolutely, for something that formed in our own solar system, and something that formed around another star.

We can see lots of impacts. There are big ones, there are small ones. The big ones you can see from 10 feet away.

Virtually all of the atoms in our bodies and in the Earth were in interstellar grains - stardust grains - before the solar system formed. We're using this comet as a library that picked up records of the formation of our solar system, and has been storing them far from the sun at very low temperatures for four and a half billion years.

We have always stressed in this mission that we are stardust. Our planet and even our selves have a direct relationship to the particles we brought back.

We were having a great time. We were really excited, and this did not go on for five minutes. It went on all day.

The prediction was that we would get a dozen particles larger than human hair size and one particle a little bit larger than a millimeter.

We opened the capsule yesterday and it's just full of comet dust.

We've brought back an ancient cosmic treasure from the very edge of the solar system.

When you have the samples in hand, it's a whole different universe.

We fully expect some of the comet particles to be older than the sun.

What was the chance someone would put a g-switch in backward and not be discovered, ... It has got to be a low probability event.

We?re using this comet as a library that picked up records and stored them far from the sun at very low temperatures for 4.5 billion years.

At this point in time, we're absolutely thrilled. It's totally remarkable to have a fully successful mission. Of all the things that could go wrong either in space or even scientifically, none of the bad things happened and everything really exceeded our wildest expectations.

They always ended up with a rigid, crusty material. If you were standing on it you might go right through it.

Scientifically, that's great, because there's been lots of discussion of whether comets contain minerals or glass.

The most interesting thing about comets is they are libraries with the stored records of our formation.

That's why we were jumping up and down. We were totally overwhelmed by the ability to actually see this.

It is quite exciting to find these things at the edge of the solar system.

It's not much, but still it's so much that we're almost overwhelmed. The first grain we worked on, we haven't even cut into the main part of the particle yet.

For all the ideas and theories that people might have, we have some real ground truth.

It's thrilling. We have samples of a comet from the edge of the solar system.

It's certain such materials never formed inside this icy, cold body.

It's coming apart under the heating of the sun.

Its cargo was an ancient, cosmic treasure from the very edge of the solar system ? a treasure that formed when the solar system formed 4.5 billion years ago.

It's really quite an epic thing. I think it tends to get overlooked because it's just a little mission, and there aren't any people on board.

So far, as far as we know Wild 2 is a unique object.

The interesting thing is we are finding these high-temperature minerals in materials from the coldest place in the solar system.

I'm confident that the particles will be the most primitive stuff we've ever had on Earth.

I fully expect that textbooks in the future will have a lot of information about the formation of the solar system from these samples that landed this morning in Utah.

In the coming days we'll be documenting the positions and character of all the tracks, looking at some of them in more detail.

In the coldest part of the solar system, we've found samples that have formed at extremely high temperatures. When these minerals formed, they were either red-hot or white-hot grains.

Inside this thing is our treasure, our sample of the edge of the solar system that truly contains star dust.

Comets are like libraries, storing the record of our formation in tiny particles.

The community is real jazzed about it. People all over the world, using all kinds of fantastic instruments and new techniques, are ready. We've got the best people signed up to do the analyses,