Curation and Preliminary Characterization of Stardust Samples

The Stardust Mission is on the verge of sampling activities at comet Wild-II; this will occur Jan 1,2004. As this critical date approaches the science team for the mission has begun to make firm plans for the preliminary characterization and analysis of the returned cometary and interstellar dust samples. We expect to return 1000's of 5-20 microns sized cometary grains, and on the order of 100 interstellar grains to Earth, all collected in blocks of special silica aerogel. A description of the curation and preliminary characteristics of the Stardust samples are given.