Q. What is the cosmic dust that I keep hearing about? What is it made of? Where does it come from?
A. One of the most important targets of NASA’s space research is the vast amount of cosmic dust in the universe. It is often referred to as stardust, but there are many kinds in many locations in the solar system, and between planets, stars and galaxies.
According to NASA, cosmic dust particles are made of various elements, including carbon, oxygen, iron and others, all heavier than the hydrogen and helium believed to be the primordial substances of the universe.
Much of the dust is believed to be the product of supernovas, explosions of giant stars, like one visible from Earth in 1987. The dust clouds left by that explosion, designated SN 1987A, have been extensively studied.
Cosmic dust is found on Earth as well as in space, and particles have recently been identified not just in the relatively clean ice of polar regions but in ordinary dust on rooftops in Oslo, Norway.
In 2014, NASA announced that it had tentatively identified seven minute particles from the Stardust spacecraft, which returned to Earth in 2006, as contemporary interstellar space dust.
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