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The Dust Buster mass spec

Image Credit: ASIAA

The Dust Buster mass spec assembled in our lab almost ready to analyze comet samples from the Stardust mission with high sensitivity and multi-element capability.

On January 15, 2006 NASA’s Stardust spacecraft successfully ended its seven year mission to comet Wild-2. It has brought back dust samples collected during the comet flyby at 200+ km and from the ISM streams. In anticipation of these precious samples, we have collaborated with the Institute of Earth Sciences to obtain a topical grant from the Academy to build a new generation mass spectrometer optimized for such experiments. This new machine was named Dust-buster since its main purpose is to destroy dust (hopefully to gain knowledge) to discover its origins.