NASA Stardust Status Report 1 Aug 2003
The spacecraft is in its 2-month solar conjunction period where it is
within 3 degrees of the Sun as viewed from Earth. There is no commanding but
only downlink telemetry during this period. All subsystems are performing
normally.
The Stardust flight team is continuing its effort to finalize all plans for
the Comet Wild 2 encounter. An ‘Encounter Workshop’ is scheduled for mid-August
to complete all encounter action items. Final decisions about the approach,
encounter and departure sequences for Stardust’s encounter with Comet Wild 2
will be made at the workshop. Formal reviews of these decisions and plans
will then follow.
Information on the present position and orbits of the Stardust spacecraft
and comet Wild 2 may be found on the "Where Is Stardust Right Now?" web
page located at:
http://stardust.jpl.nasa.gov/mission/scnow.html
For more information on the Stardust mission — the first ever comet
sample-return mission — please visit the Stardust home page:
