Scott Sandford to talk on March 1, 2006 at 7 p.m.

Dr. Scott Sandford from NASA Ames will give a non-technical illustrated talk on Project Stardust - the comet studying spacecraft that made a successful landing in Utah on January 15. This talk will be at 7 p.m. on Wednesday, March 1. It will be in the Smithwick Theater, Foothill College, El Monte Road and Freeway 280, in Los Altos Hills, California. This event is free and open to the public. Parking is $2 at Foothill College. Call the series hot-line at (650) 949-7888 for more information.

The Stardust mission is a spacecraft that flew by and, for the first time ever, collected samples from a comet (Comet Wild-2.) The samples were successfully returned to Earth on January 15, 2006 and are now being analyzed. The spacecraft traveled about 2.9 billion miles over 7 years to collect and bring back samples of what may be some of the earliest material from the solar system ever seen.

Dr. Sandford, an expert on meteorites and the material between the planets, is co-investigator on the Stardust mission, and was actively involved in the recovery of the Stardust capsule in the Utah desert. He will fill us in on what this historic mission accomplished and what the initial analysis of the samples is revealing.

The series is co-sponsored by NASA Ames Research Center, Foothill College Astronomy Program, SETI Institute, and the Astronomical Society of Pacific.