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	EVENTS For information on JPL tours and the speakers bureau, visit our PUBLIC SERVICES site. The Solar System Ambassador Program sponsors events in communities around the country. Find out how to become a volunteer Solar System Ambassador. View the archived webcasts.   Topic - The First Comet Sample Return Return to Sender: The Stardust Sample Return Mission Presented by Tom Duxbury JPL, Stardust Project Manager Click here for the archived webcast.  If you don't have RealPlayer, you can download the free RealPlayer 8 Basic.   Thursday, March 18 The von Kármán Auditorium at JPL 4800 Oak Grove Drive Pasadena, CA For directions, click here. Friday, March 19 The Vosloh Forum at Pasadena City College 1570 East Colorado Blvd. Pasadena, CA For directions, click here. Both lectures begin at 7 p.m. PST and run for approximately an hour. Admission is free. Seating is limited. For more information, call (818) 354-0112. Stardust is the first U.S. mission dedicated solely to a comet. Stardust's main objective is to capture material from comet Wild 2, with encounter scheduled for January 2, 2004, and to return these samples to Earth for analysis. The spacecraft will also collect interstellar dust from a recently discovered flow of particles from interstellar space that passes through our solar system. Scientists want to analyze the composition of this "stardust" to determine the history, chemistry, physics, and mineralogy of nature's most fundamental building blocks. Stardust's historic meeting with comet Wild 2 will be described in this talk, enhanced with images of the comet's nucleus and an encounter animation. Stardust's samples will be returned to Earth on January 15, 2006. To learn more about the Stardust mission, click here.
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