Much to their surprise, planetary scientists have found that comet dust collected by NASA’s Stardust spacecraft closely resembles materials found in asteroids. In a paper published in this week’s issue of the journal „Science“, researchers found that the dust collected from comet Wild 2 has a composition that more closely resembles chondritic meteorites from the asteroid belt. Scientists have expected the comet dust would contain relatively primitive materials dating back to the formation of the solar system, but instead found compounds that have formed much closer to the Sun. The results suggest that the comet actually formed relative close to the Sun and was later ejected into the outer solar system.
Stardust comet dust resembles asteroid materials