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miohtama
Did I understand correctly from the article that the sample size is only 100 milligrams?
AnimalMuppet
"More than 100 mg". And that was the mission intent. They won't know if they achieved it until they open the box and weigh the contents.
miohtama
But 100mg is less than a single dust speckle.. big box for a small flake
AnimalMuppet
I think your math is a bit off. 1 gram of water = 1 cubic cm. Rock is more dense, maybe by a factor of 5. So 100 mg of rock would be 2% of a cc. That's tiny - much smaller than I expected for the mission - but it's still a lot bigger than a dust speck.
Bjartr
Turns out getting material from a celestial object back to terra-firma unaltered is pretty damn hard. Fortunately, modern scientific instruments can do a lot with a little.