STARDUST Flyby of Comet Wild 2 . ... Credit Copyright: STARDUST Team , JPL , NASA Explanation: Flying past a comet nucleus is dangerous. On January 2, the robot spacecraft STARDUST became one of the first to plow through the surrounding cloud of dust and grit to photograph the very heart of a comet. ... Surprisingly, although the nucleus appeared to be solid, the the surrounding coma appeared to be highly fragmented into several distinct streams of particles. ... NASA Official: Jay Norris. ...