It was gratifying to see that some of the cometary particle that hit our collectors where so big that they were visible to the naked eye. This told us we had successfully recovered some samples for analysis even before we removed the first tile. The entire tray was photodocumented before any of the aerogel tiles were removed. Two of the bigger impacts can be seen in this image.

Once all the aerogel collector tiles had been photodocumented, we selected a few for removal. The first step in removing a tile was to cut away the aluminum foil liner tops on the tray. Here you see an image of the foil cutter developed by Fred Horz and colleagues at JSC cutting some of the first foils.

The freed tiles were then pulled using a special tool designed by Peter Tsou of JPL. Here's the tray minus the first tile we pulled, and a picture of the removed tile.

The removed tiles could then be searched fro tracks from all directions. Here are some images of a tile from the top and a tile from the side. Large comet particle tracks are visible in both images.

Below is a close up image of several tracks as seen from the side. The shapes of the tracks make it clear that many of the cometary particles that hit the Stardust collector tiles consisted of loosely bound aggregates of smaller grains of varying sizes. Only the largest and toughest subgrains make it to the end of a track.

Samples from the Stardust collectors are now being studied by scientists around the world, and the first papers describing these materials will probably be appearing in the scientific literature by late 2006.