NASA Finds New Type Of Comet Dust Mineral

NASA researchers and scientists from the United States, Germany and Japan have found a new mineral in material that probably came from a comet.

The mineral, a manganese silicide Brownleeite named, was discovered within an interplanetary dust particles or IDP, which seems to have 26P/Grigg-Skjellerup from comets. The comet was originally discovered in 1902 and will return every 5 years. The team, the discovery is led by Keiko Nakamura-Messenger, a space scientist at NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston.

"When I saw this mineral for the first time I immediately knew this was something nobody had seen before," said Nakamura-Messenger. "But it took several more months to consistent data, because this mineral grains were only 1 / 10000 of an inch in size."

A new method for the collection of internally displaced persons has been proposed by Scott Messenger, another Johnson Space scientists. He predicted 26P/Grigg-Skjellerup comet was a source of dust grains could be caught in the stratosphere of the earth at a certain time of the year.

In response to its forecast, NASA conducted stratosphere dust collections, with an ER-2 aircraft flown amount of NASA's Dryden Flight Research Center at Edwards Air Force Base in California. The aircraft collected internally displaced from this particular comet stream in April 2003. The new mineral was in one of the particles. To determine the mineral origin and to examine other materials dust, a powerful new transmission electron microscope was in 2005 in Johnson.

"Due to its extremely small size, we had to use state-of-the-art nano-analysis techniques under the microscope to measure the chemical composition and crystal structure of Keiko's new mineral," said Lindsay Keller, Johnson Space scientists and Co - discoverer of the new mineral. "This is a highly unusual material that was not predicted to either a component or cometary have by condensation in the solar nebula."

Since 1982, NASA routinely collected cosmic and interplanetary dust with high-altitude research aircraft. However, the sources of most dust particles were difficult to pin down because of their complex history in space. The Earth accretes over 40000 tonnes of dust particles from space every year, mostly originating in the disintegration of comets and asteroid collisions. This dust is a topic of interest, because it from the original building blocks of our solar system, planets, and our body.

The mineral was surrounded by several layers of other minerals were only in extraterrestrial rocks. There were 4324 minerals, which by the International Mineralogical Association, or IMA. This finding adds another mineral that list.

The IMA approved new mineral, Brownleeite, is named after Donald E. Brownlee, professor of astronomy at the University of Washington, Seattle. Brownlee founded the field of IP research. The understanding of the early solar system founded by IDP studies would not exist without his efforts. Brownlee is also the Principal Investigator of NASA's Stardust mission.