81P/WildThe comet whose coma dust was sample-returned to Earth by NASA's Stardust mission
Comet Wild 2
81P/Wild (Wild 2) is a short-period comet that spent most of its life in the outer Solar System until a close pass by Jupiter in 1974 swung it into the inner Solar System, cutting its orbit from about 43 years to roughly 6.4 years. NASA's Stardust spacecraft flew within ~240 km of its nucleus on January 2, 2004, captured detailed images of its cratered, pitted surface, and trapped grains of its coma dust in aerogel. Those samples parachuted back to Earth on January 15, 2006 — the first cometary material ever returned — revealing high-temperature minerals like olivine that had to form near the early Sun, reshaping ideas about how the Solar System mixed.
- Designation
- 81P/Wild
- Type
- Spacecraft target
- Orbital period
- 6.4 years
- Discovery
- Discovered by Swiss astronomer Paul Wild on January 6, 1978, at Zimmerwald Observatory, Switzerland
