Capturing particles from a comet as it whizzes by is a way of looking back in time.
We were jumping up and down ? we were totally overwhelmed by the ability to see this so quickly and so straightforwardly. We were the first people in the history of the planet to see comet dust in hand.
Oh, how portentous is prosperity! How comet-like, it threatens while it shines.
Getting a sample from a comet but not landing on it, is probably the best chance we have of discovering what the solar system was like 4.5 billion years ago.
I have just gone over my comet computations again, and it is humiliating to perceive how very little more I know than I did seven years ago when I first did this kind of work.
This spacecraft is a comet explorer. It has the tools to do a lot more.
This was our first view of the comet dust. We are the first people in the history of the planet to see comet dust.
And I turned myself to behold wisdom, and madness, and folly: for what can the man do that cometh after the king? even that which hath been already done.
In recent decades, spacecraft have passed fairly close to comets and provided us with excellent data. Stardust, however, marks the first time that we have ever collected samples from a comet and brought them back to Earth for study.
It's thrilling. We have samples of a comet from the edge of the solar system.