Collection and curation of interplanetary dust particles recovered from the stratosphere by NASA

Since May, 1981, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) has used aircraft to collect interplanetary dust particles (IDPs) from Earth’s stratosphere. Specially designed dust collectors are prepared for flight and processes after flight in an ultra clean (Class‐100) laboratory constructed for this purpose at the Lyndon B. Johnson Space Center (JSC) in Houston, Texas. Particles are individually retrieved from the collectors, examined and cataloged, and then made available to the scientific community for research. Interplanetary dust thereby joins lunar samples and Antractic meteorites as a critical extraterrestrial material curated at JSC.