Discovery Channel Documentaries

Catching the Comet (2006x15)

Air date: Jan 22, 2006

We’ve watched them streak across the sky for centuries, but what - beyond their sometimes extraordinary and fleeting beauty - do we really know about comets? Follow a breakthrough mission to demystify and - for the very first time - capture the contents of a comet. Premiering Sunday, January 22 at 7 p.m. ET/8 p.m. PT on Discovery Channel, Catching the Comet follows the exploration of a comet by devising an innovative way to bring one home. This one-hour special follows the Stardust mission, the first U.S. space project dedicated to the exploration of a comet, and the first robotic exercise designed to return comet dust to Earth. Last year a NASA spacecraft flew past the comet, dubbed Wild 2, to collect comet dust - particles smaller than a grain of sand - in a specially designed high-tech capsule. On January 15, 2006, that capsule will fall to Earth in the Utah desert. In the middle of the night, at a restricted location on a U.S. army base, waiting helicopters will pluck the canister from its landing spot and transport it to a specially prepared lab for analysis. What will the experiments reveal about this mysterious dust - and how will this new discovery inform our understanding of comets? In Catching the Comet, follow the 4.8-billion kilometre Stardust operation, from mission control to the preparations for the capsule’s return and its actual fall to Earth. What do scientists know about comets already? Comets are like “cosmic refrigerators” - so cold, untouched and remote that they provide clues to the physical and chemical conditions of the solar system as it existed 4.6 billion years ago. That old stuff stuck at the back of the “cosmic fridge” is best described as frozen primordial ooze from the time the planets and Sun were formed. When scientists observe comets today, they are reaching back into the past and learning about the origin of the solar system and perhaps the beginning of life on Earth. But these balls of gas, dust and ice cont