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Featured Scientist Archive
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Tom Economou, Co-Investigator of Stardust-NExT
What is your current role on the Stardust-NEXT mission?
I am a Co-I and team lead for the Dust Flux Monitor Instrument ( DFMI).
What suggestions do you have for young people today wanting to do
what you do?
To study hard, to be dreamers and willing to sacrifice for the good of science.
Follow the advice of your teachers.
+ Read more
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Jessica Sunshine, Co-investigator, UMD
What is your role on the Stardust-NExT Mission?
I’m responsible for identifying and interpreting the significance of ice components on the surface of comet 9P/Tempel 1, establishing any associations with water vapor in the coma, and comparing these to what we saw with the Deep Impact mission in 2005
This is not the first time you've "gone to a comet." Can you tell us more about what else you've done?
I’ve “gone to” this comet. As part of the Deep Impact science team we carried out the largest scale impact experiment ever! My particular focus is with the spectrometer data collected from the fly-by spacecraft. We studied the pre-impact nucleus and the dust
and ice in the ejecta.
+ Read more
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Mike A'Hearn, Co-investigator, UMD
What does it mean to you to return to Comet Tempel 1?
Returning to Tempel 1 is exciting on two fronts. Most obviously, the fact that the material we excavated from Tempel 1 with Deep Impact was broken into such fine particles that we never say through to the crater. Stardust-NExT will give us the first look at the crater and this will tell us a lot about the physical properties of the outer layers. Secondly, we will have a chance, for the first time for any comet, to see how the natural activity over an entire orbital period has changed the surface. We should expect to see noticeable changes.
+ Read more
