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Donald Brownlee is also the co-author of Rare Earth: Why Complex Life Is Uncommon in the Universe (photo courtesy NASA/JPL-Caltech)

How many engineers have an asteroid named after them? UC Berkeley College of Engineering alum Donald Brownlee (B.S.'65 EECS) does. Interestingly, the world-famous astronomer spends more time looking through microscopes than telescopes.

A professor of astronomy at the University of Washington, Brownlee's research focuses on the small stuff in the big universe. He's a leading expert on interplanetary dust, studying extraterrestrial materials collected from space and the earth to gain insight into the origins of the cosmos. He's currently principal investigator for NASA's Stardust, a spacecraft that last January rendezvoused with Comet Wild 2 to collect cosmic material from deep space. In January 2006, Stardust will return to Earth bearing the samples in its high-tech dustbin for scientists to study.

As a senior at UC Berkeley in 1964, Brownlee launched a cosmic dust collector from the Greek Theater on campus. (courtesy Donald Brownlee)

Before Stardust was ever a twinkle in NASA's eyes, Brownlee became well-known in the 1970s as the discoverer of cosmic particles in Earth's stratosphere. Each year, more than 10,000 tons of these "micrometeorites," known as Brownlee Particles, fall to Earth. By collecting the Brownlee Particles from the upper atmosphere and ocean floor, scientists hope to better understand the early history of the solar system.

Stardust encountered Comet Wild 2 on January 2, entrapping bits of cometary dust in its tennis racket-like collector. At about 800 pounds, the relatively low-cost unmanned craft is solar powered and flies close to Earth to get gravitational boosts during its journey. (photo courtesy NASA/JPL-Caltech)

Brownlee's set his sights on space for the first time during his senior year at Berkeley as a student in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences. In 1964, he took an elective astronomy class on a whim and as his final project launched a cosmic dust collector suspended from a pair of high-altitude weather balloons. His next mission was a PhD in astronomy from the University of Washington.

This movie strings together a series of still images of comet Wild 2. The high-resolution pictures were taken by NASA's Stardust spacecraft during its historic flyby of the comet on Jan 2, 2004.

"My engineering background has been a plus because most astronomers don't know a lot about engineering issues," Brownlee says. "A project like Stardust is primarily engineering: nuts and bolts, electronics, project management, the whole ball of wax."

Five years ago, Brownlee and another Berkeley-alum Peter Tsou (B.S.'65, M.S.'66 EECS), Stardust's deputy principal investigator and project engineer watched as the spacecraft was launched from Cape Canaveral Air Station. Next year, the precious cargo will be parachuted back to terra firma and Brownlee will again peer into his microscope to help uncover the secret history in the stardust.

Donald Brownlee's home page

"Stardust: Close encounter of a cometary kind" (Forefront, Spring 2004)

Stardust (NASA/Jet Propulsion Laboratory)

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