61 Quotes by Don Brownlee

But the study of these materials will go on for decades.

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.

What we want to know is how organic molecules actually form in comets and whether they helped deliver organic material to the Earth before life began.

People all over world will be able to analyze them down to a single atomic scale.

Our history is written at the submicron level, in these interstellar grains.

Remarkably enough, we have found fire and ice. We have found samples in the coldest part of the solar system.

Our mission is called Stardust, in part because we believe some of the particles in the comet will, in fact, be older than the sun.

It felt like the whole thing was on the verge of disaster. There was this guy with his finger on a button to blow the vehicle up if it went off range. ... No one said anything for minutes.

We'll be able to say some things almost instantly. One of the big questions is do comets contain minerals that contain water, called hydrated silicates and under an electron microscope you can identify those practically instantly.