Don Brownlee System Quotations

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.