NASA’s Stardust capsule is scheduled to streak across western skies over a path from Crescent City, California, Winnemucca and Elko, Nevada to its touchdown point in western Utah. The probe will return minute particles collected during it’s journey in space.
One of my daily visits, SpaceWeather.com had this information:
FIREBALL ALERT: On Sunday morning, Jan. 15th, between 1:56 and 1:59 a.m. PST, a brilliant fireball will streak over northern California and Nevada. It’s NASA’s Stardust capsule, returning to Earth with samples of dust from Comet Wild 2. The best observing sites are near Carlin and Elko, Nevada, where the man-made meteor is expected to shine as much as 60 times brighter than Venus.
The flight path of the Stardust capsuleThe fireball might be widely visible from parts of Oregon, Idaho and Utah as well as California and Nevada: observing tips. NASA is interested in videos and photos of the re-entry, which could help researchers learn more about, e.g., the physics of heat shields. Got data? Send it here.
After the spacecraft returns, volunteers will analyze the micrographs by looking for “needles” in “haystacks” – minute particles, few and far between – from electronic images distributed for analysis, similar to the Search for Extra Terrestrial Institute’s distributed processing of SETI data. You can volunteer and maybe be part of the team at Stardust@Home.