Sixth Grade
Worksheets
Stardust Mission
Caption: Stardust's reentry into Earth's atmosphere
Some people drive trucks for a living. Some people teach sixth grade. But some people -- some people collect stardust.
That was the job of the scientists on NASA's Stardust Project. They sent a spacecraft, also named Stardust, into outer space to collect dust from a comet. Along the way, the spacecraft also collected Stardust from space.
The scientists were especially interested in the comet dust. They already knew that comets were made of raw materials from the early days of the solar system. A look at comet dust could give them information about what the solar system was like before the planets were formed.
