Student education

Comet dust caught in the upper reaches of Earth's atmosphere and scooped up by a NASA aircraft had been found to contain grains of dust dating back to before our Solar System formed. Dust like this is worth its weight in gold for telling us about the original conditions in the solar nebula that formed the planets.

The dust is from comet 26P/Grigg-Skjellerup, which last passed through the inner Solar System in 2002. A year later, Earth itself passed through the trail of the comet, and the NASA aircraft climbed to catch the dust. It was then handed over to a consortium of UK, US and German astronomers who found various chemical treasure troves, including in one dust particle four grains of silicate material that date back to before the formation of the Sun.