Virtually all of the atoms in our bodies and in the Earth were in interstellar grains - stardust grains - before the solar system formed. We're using this comet as a library that picked up records of the formation of our solar system, and has been storing them far from the sun at very low temperatures for four and a half billion years.

Donald Brownlee

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We're approaching the end of a fantastic voyage. This is the farthest anything from Earth has traveled and come back. Soon we'll be able to examine the building blocks that formed the solar system 4.6 billion years ago.

— Donald Brownlee

These are literally the building blocks of our planetary system. All of the atoms in our bodies - the carbon atoms, the oxygen, the nitrogen, potassium, calcium and so forth - all of those atoms were in stardust grains like those coming out of the comet now before the solar system formed.

— Don Brownlee

Each year we have 30 to 40,000 tons of primitive material from comets and asteroids that lands on Earth, and this is about one particle per square meter per day. So during the course of our seven-year mission, there was more comet dust collected in your backyard than what we're bringing home.

— Don Brownlee

We're seeing a variety of things that we know absolutely come from a comet.

— Donald Brownlee

AbsolutelyCometSeeing

We fully expect some of the comet particles to be older than the sun.

— Donald Brownlee

CometExpectFully