Utah company animates space mission

Far from the world of its origins, the Stardust spacecraft swooped past a comet and captured bits of the ice and dust blowing from its surface.

No human could have seen the probe nearing Comet Wild 2. But thanks to the computer magic of a South Jordan production company, earthlings are able to visualize it.

The Stardust probe has been traveling through space for seven years, during which it gathered particles of interstellar dust and bits of material blowing off Comet Wild 2. The end of its 2.9 billion-mile round-trip comes on the early morning of Jan. 15, when its sample capsule will hit Earth's atmosphere at 29,000 miles per hour.

After drogue parachutes slow it, Stardust is slated to come to rest on the desert floor of Dugway Proving Ground, within the Utah Test and Training Range. A helicopter crew will retrieve the capsule with its scientifically priceless contents.

When NASA presents information about the project on its Internet TV site and in news broadcasts, the space agency will illustrate Stardust's trek with an animation made by Starlight Productions, South Jordan.

The six-minute, 15-second clip includes sound by Skywalker Sound, a division of Lucas Digital Ltd., according to Starlight.

The company produced an animation for the Genesis probe, which gathered samples of the solar wind. Because two sensors were not working properly at re-entry in September 2004, the probe crashed into the Dugway mud.

"I'd be willing to bet this one will come down just fine," said Bruce Thatcher, developer-producer at Starlight Productions.

In fact, the company is planning a party for Jan. 15. Not that there will be a lot of company officials involved: Starlight has three full-time employees, he said.

Much of the production was by Aaron McEuen, company president and lead developer on the project.

The new video shows highly detailed animations of Stardust's launch, rendezvous with the comet, "and then collecting particles from the comet," he said. The return to Earth also is shown.

"One of the things we needed to do was build a model of the spacecraft," he said. This was not a balsa-wood-and-glue model, but a digital one that existed in the cyber-world.

The company was glad to find that NASA already had digital models of Stardust, enormous computer files. "We had to do some manipulation to get it down to the size we needed."

Through digital techniques, they "built" the launch scene, including sky and clouds, and built the comet. Then they put the scenes together and rendered it, using numbers to assemble a view that is "person friendly," he said.

"The rendering itself could take anywhere from a few minutes to a few hours per frame, depending on how involved the image was." The movie runs at 30 frames per second.

Asked if the company is excited about the project, he said, "We are. The Genesis animation that we did was seen on CNN and some of the other networks also. We were very pleased with that."

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E-mail: bau@desnews.com