The plant is majority owned by a joint venture of Alcoa and Alumina, with China's CITIC and Japan's Marubeni Corp holding smaller shares.

The question whether carbon or silicate grains will form critically depends on the chemical composition of the Jovian atmosphere.

Bismuth silicate (BSO), Bismuth germanite (BGO) and their solid solutions have created a great deal of interest in the forms of bulk crystals and epitaxial films for opto and acousto electronic applications in integrated devices.

New materials such as fused silica glass, ultra low expansion titanium silicate, and glass ceramic, to name a few, as well as application of advanced glass coating techniques, could improve dramatically the capability and reliability of remote sensing instruments.

Thus, the interplanetary dust is not represented by any of the meteorites in our collections and in all likelihood micrometeorites represent the silicate portion of comets.There is still no consensus on the origin of these crystalline melt droplets after which the most common meteorites, the chondrites, are named.