Our solar system, and other planetary systems, started as a disk of microscopic dust, gas, and ice around the young Sun. The amazing diversity of objects in the solar system today – the planets, moons, asteroids, and comets – was made from this primitive dust.
NASA’s Stardust mission returned to Earth with samples of comet Wild 2, a comet that originated outside the orbit of Neptune and was subsequently kicked closer to Earth’s orbit in 1974 when Jupiter’s gravity altered Wild 2′s orbit.
Three larger rocks, each containing several crystals, from comet Wild 2 are shown on the left of this image in cross-section, as imaged by an electron microscope. Fine-grained dust from the comet, still embedded in the aerogel it was captured in, is shown at right. All images are at the same scale; 5 micrometer scale bar is shown.
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