April 15, 2016

Image showing Milky Way, local interstellar cloud, the solar system and Cassini near Saturn (Image ESA; dust grain inset: NASA/JPL; Saturn image: NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute)

An article published in the journal “Science” describes the analysis of the composition of interstellar dust that entered the solar system and was intercepted by the Cassini space probe. Among the instruments on board there’s the Cosmic Dust Analyser (CDA), which over the years of its mission has collected millions of dust samples: 36 of them were found to be of interstellar origin.