Stardust floats down

WENDOVER, Tooele County — "There it is!" a man exclaimed, and suddenly the Stardust space probe reappeared after seven years and nearly 2.9 billion miles of space travel, a fierce yellow-orange dot climbing swiftly above the western cloud bank.

It showed up right on schedule at 2:58 a.m. Sunday, a manmade meteorite far brighter than any star or planet.

Growing even more brilliant as it curved toward the southeast, it passed over buildings of the World War II-era air station, streaked behind the metal latticework of an aging control tower, emerged and flew high above the constellation Orion. A fainter purplish tail stretched behind it. The spacecraft arched almost directly overhead and dimmed as it slowed.

Half a minute after it appeared, Stardust disappeared into fluffy high clouds. By this time its drogue parachute had slowed it so effectively that atmospheric friction no longer made it glow, and it wasn't seen again. But about 2 1/2 minutes later, a final reminder of its passage reverberated: a loud sonic boom, like a small cannon going off.

Dozens of spectators, many from the Wasatch Front, erupted into cheers. Patrick Wiggins, NASA solar system ambassador to Utah, led the crowd in the yell, "Welcome home, Stardust!"

Wiggins noted that the returning craft was "very bright" and its tail was "like a pencil line across the sky." Watching through large binoculars, he saw small curly details in the tail.

"It came out of the cloud bank," he said. "Talk about a performer! Making stage entry from the curtain, right to center stage, and then a beautiful exit."

Craig Browne, president of the Ogden Astronomical Society, felt the same way. "It was a beautiful sight," he said.

He showed a medallion struck to commemorate Stardust's flight. One side carries a picture of the probe with the launch and re-entry dates. On the reverse is a slogan about astronomy, the spirit of exploration. Larger than a half-dollar, the medallion will be sold to raise money for the society and Ott Planetarium at Weber State University, Ogden.

To obtain one of the 300 medallions, designed by Mike Klein and for sale at $13 each, call the WSU planetarium.

Matt Trebella of Stansbury, Tooele County, the husband of a reporter for the Tooele Transcript, said their group was about five miles south of Wendover at the time. When they saw the re-entry, they immediately knew what it was.

"It lit up from the west," Trebella said. "Our favorite part of the whole thing was the sonic boom afterwards. That was amazing."

Even for those watching from Dugway Proving Ground some 80 miles southeast of Wendover, Stardust put on a dazzling show.

Don Brownlee of the University of Washington at Seattle, the project's principal scientific investigator, was at Dugway for the recovery. Five minutes before re-entry, he and several others hurried out of the "clean room" that had been set up to receive the spacecraft. They tried to find a place without bright lights so any gleam from Stardust would not be overwhelmed by brighter illumination.

"We weren't sure exactly where it was going to be or whether it'd even be visible this far to the east," Brownlee said in an interview at Dugway.

As it happened, Stardust's re-entry was not only visible, "it was really quite amazing," he said.

"My biggest emotion was watching the fireball come in," Brownlee added. "That was unexpected and truly spectacular. I mean it was just an awesome, a truly awesome, event."

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E-mail: bau@desnews.com