It was May 1998 when I read about this cool NASA endevour called Project Stardust. The idea of this mission was to launch a capsule that would fly through the tail of the Comet P/Wild 2 and collect some interstellar dust. The collected dust would then return to earth in a capsule so it could be studied here. Now, what was special about the mission is the fact that in a public outreach effort, over 1 million names of people were collected and placed on two chips inside the Stardust spacecraft: the first one has 136,000 names and the second has over 1 million names. It allowed people to be personally involved with the Stardust Mission and helps to promote public interest. I submitted my name as well, and it did actually get engraved on the second microchip! On February 7, 1999 Stardust was launched, and now – almost 7 years later – the mission has come to a succesfull end, with the landing of the Stardust capsule yesterday. To me it is a fascinating idea that my name travelled thousands of miles through the universe.
Two copies of each microchip were made. One set will remain in space in the STARDUST spacecraft which will continue to orbit the Sun after the mission. The other set of chips returned to Earth in the Sample Return Capsule. Plans are to place the returned microchips in a major museum, but the museum has not been chosen yet. The names on the microchips are from individuals who submitted their own names along with the names of friends and family if they chose to include them. Also, all members of the Planetary Society and the National Space Society current as of 1998 were included. In addition, as a special tribute, all names on the Vietnam War Memorial in Washington, DC were included. And finally, the names and selected photos of members of the STARDUST Mission team were also included.
