CHOCOLATE COMET: Forget the news headlines. You know you’ve made it big when your research project ends up on a candy bar. Astronomy professor Donald Brownlee’s Stardust project is one of nine NASA missions now being featured on Nestlé’s Crunch bars. The seven-year mission, which launches in February, will send a spacecraft to comet Wild 2 to gather samples of comet dust and return them to Earth for analysis. The chocolate bar has a replica of the spacecraft and representation of a comet. The big difference: The real Stardust spacecraft isn’t stamped with the word “Crunch.”

KUDOS: Political Science Professor John Keeler has been named a Chevalier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres by the French Minister of Culture and Communications. The award is given to those “distinguished by their creations in the artistic or literary domains, or by the contribution they have made to the extension of arts and letters in France and throughout the world.” ¶