When cleaning in your home, you are most likely using vacuum cleaner collect cosmic dust. I’m serious. This is the same dust that was once part of comets and asteroids. You notice this dust in the faint flicker that it helps to create before sunrise and after sunset. About 40,000 tons annually cosmic dust hits the earth. 
Photos from open sources While this fact does not seem to be exposed doubtful, there are many conflicting opinions about where does this dust come from. We know that most of it descends to our planet in a descending spiral from the interplanetary dust cloud – a wide strip of dust in the form of a disk, forming around the sun. But where exactly is this dust cloud? As shown by recent studies, more than 10% of this dust comes from asteroids, whereas most of it is formed on comets from the Jupiter family. Most likely, they enter the inner solar system in collision with other comets in the Kuiper belt (Kuiper belt) – the most significant comet belt located behind the planet Neptune.
When cosmic dust falls to Earth, it can cause meteor shower (shooting stars), the formation of which depends on its size and total amount. Actually perseids and Leonids, annual meteor showers, form when the Earth enters a strip of dust left by Swift-Tuttle comets and Tempel-Tuttle. Cosmic dust moves with high speed, which at times exceeds 150,000 kilometers in hour. It decreases as a result of the impact of the Earth’s atmosphere, however, the stress generated in its large parts is sufficient large so that they burn out, forming a light flash. Smaller parts of the dust carry more. They are capable cope with a sudden change in pressure when entering the atmosphere Earth and therefore reach its surface.
A photo from open sources
© Photo: M.Jones et al NASA constantly uses special aircraft ER2, research version U2 spy plane for collecting space dust on stratospheric altitudes (about 20 kilometers, i.e. about twice as large as usual heights of commercial flights). The dust collection technique is not particularly complicated. At cruising altitude in the stratosphere, the pilot opens special compartments under the wings – the so-called sticky panels, – which collect cosmic dust. And already on earth, experts NASA uses an ultra-clean lab to extract cosmic dust from the collectors and transfer it for research to scientists, including me. My research is centered around precisely these dust particles, as they provide excellent an opportunity to study comets. Another method is to run to comet of a special spacecraft that is supposed to return to Earth after passing through consisting of particles of ice and dust tail of the comet or even after landing on its surface. While was only one mission of this kind has been completed – NASA’s Star project dust “(Star Dust). 
Photos from open sources Flying to the Sun, despite their high cost, represent the ability to collect the cleanest samples of the solar system that we have ever we can explore. The spacecraft acts in this case like a cocoon protecting taken samples during a flight in space space, and also from exceptionally high temperatures at the entrance into the earth’s atmosphere, whereas in the absence of such protection in collected samples may cause irreversible changes.
Comets contain the primary dust from which they formed our solar system, and since throughout its of existence, these particles remained at a very far distance from The sun, they create the effect of deep freezing, keeping this dust that is billions of years old. Studying like dust, we get the opportunity to travel back in time to the beginning of the formation of the solar system. it necessary for understanding the composition of all that we know in including early organic matter and water.
Photos from open sources
© Photo: Michael Jager
Organic matter – chemical compounds containing carbon-hydrogen bonds exist almost everywhere in The universe. One of the main questions is whether organic compounds reach the planets and create the basics there for life. We still don’t know exactly how life came about. on the ground. If this happened exactly as we assume, then in in this case, comets and asteroids are good candidates for performance of the function of vehicles.
The same goes for water. There are plenty of it on Earth, however, we don’t know if it appeared as a result of an asteroid collision and comets with our planet or from the very beginning on it attended, and we are trying to get an answer to this question with using cosmic dust samples collected near comets.
In a recent study, I measured various forms of compounds of hydrogen, carbon, nitrogen and oxygen in the comet dust collected by NASA. Relationship between various elements allows you to get data on where this a comet formed in relation to the Sun. Received data provide us with the opportunity to judge the conditions the existence of a comet. For example, we can get information about whether it was exposed to high temperatures, which would be evidence of the passage of its trajectory near the sun.
Similar dust samples allow us to stack a few more pieces. complex puzzle, which is a space system, and also help to understand where and when the planets formed and, besides of how hot water and organic matter fit into this picture. During my life we cannot completely solve this puzzle however continuing to study samples returned from the depths of our solar system helps move forward in understanding where we are from have come.
Water Life Time NASA Sun Solar System
