Catch a Falling Stardust

NASA's Stardust probe has safely returned home with its cometary samples. Apparently it made a real pretty fireball coming in, too, which is always a bonus. They're going to be using a distributed computing approach along the lines of SETI@home to analyze the samples. No word yet on how you can volunteer, though, at least not as far as I can see.

This is looking to be a good week for NASA, as the New Horizons mission to Pluto and the Kuiper Belt is set to launch on Tuesday. They're billing it as "the first mission to the last planet," which, all debates about Pluto's planetary status aside, really is quite an exciting thought.