What we know about stardust continues to get more granular, thanks to increasingly sophisticated nano-analysis of interstellar particles.

Using particles collected by NASA aircraft after the Earth passed through a comet's wake, researchers found grains of dust from the nebula out of which our solar system formed.

“We found an extraordinary wealth of primitive chemical "fingerprints", including abundant pre-solar grains, true stardust ... associated with extremely pristine organic matter that must pre-date the formation of our planets,” said Henner Busemann of the University of Manchester, who presented the results Tuesday at the European Week of Astronomy and Space Science.

The grains of dust are considered samples of our solar system's building blocks, almost like time capsules of what our neighborhood was like before the sun and planets formed four-and-a-half billion years ago. Scientists try to find the primitive materials on comets — as in the Stardust mission — but that's difficult and expensive.

In this case, Busemann's team got NASA to fly a high-altitude plane at just the time when the Earth was passing through the 26P/Grigg-Skjellerup comet.

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