We are collecting the actual building blocks the solar system was formed from 4.5 billion years ago. We believe that the particles have a lot of information stored in them. |
We are confident [the comet] was made out of the initial building blocks of our solar system. |
We are nearing the end of quite a fantastic voyage. |
We believe materials coming out of comets now is the same material that went into comets 4.5 billion years ago. |
We did this mission to collect the most primitive materials we could in the solar system. We went to a comet that formed at the edge of the solar system, far from the sun under very cold conditions. We're confident that it was made out of the initial building blocks of our solar system. |
We didn't really know until now if we had captured them. For all we knew, they could have just exploded on impact. |
We found mineral grains that are considered very high-temperature minerals -- they normally form under extremely high temperature conditions. And yet they were collected in a comet, the Siberia of the solar system. |
We found the hottest samples in the coldest place. These are mineral grains that normally form under high temperature conditions. They were either red hot or white hot grains. Yet they were collected in the Siberia of the solar system. |
We have a crew onboard of over a million people -- their names are etched in a little silicon chip. As an astrobiology-type person, I'm intrigued by the thought that those names and that spacecraft will far outlive the Earth. When the Sun becomes a red giant and scorches the Earth, that spacecraft and those names will still be floating around the galaxy somewhere. |
We have successfully collected samples from the comet and we're bringing them home for analysis in laboratories all over the world. |
We saw incredible features -- steep cliffs, overhanging cliffs, spires and many other things we had never seen on other solar system bodies. |
We traveled almost 3 billion miles in space. We visited a comet, grabbed a piece of it, and it landed here this morning. It's an incredible thrill. |
We visited a comet, grabbed a piece of it, and landed here this morning. It was a real thrill. |
We were jumping up and down ? we were totally overwhelmed by the ability to see this so quickly and so straightforwardly. We were the first people in the history of the planet to see comet dust in hand. |
We were stunned when we got to the comet and saw incredible features - steep cliffs, overhanging cliffs, spires and many features which, oddly enough, we had never been seen on other Solar System bodies. |