This is an exciting
time for planetary scientists as NASA has received the first sample returns since the
Apollo lunar program. We collected samples of solar wind (Genesis), a comet and
interplanetary dust (Stardust) and are currently collaborating with a Japanese mission to sample an
asteroid (Hayabusa). We will soon thereafter return samples of rock and soil from Mars.
The JSC Astromaterials Acquisition and Curation Team is actively participating in all of these missions.
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| Robotic arm inside the Advanced Curation Glovebox handling rock samples. | JSC personnel precision clean Genesis flight hardware to prevent future solar wind samples from terrestrial contamination. |
