Stardust Status Report June 13, 2003
The Stardust team had six periods of communication with the spacecraft in
the past week. Telemetry relayed from the spacecraft indicates it is
healthy and all subsystems continue to operate normally.
The navigation team is preparing for the upcoming Deep Space Maneuver. This
will be a two-part maneuver with the first burn taking place on June 17,
and the second on June 18. Each one of these burns will be 25-minutes in
length. As with previous maneuvers of this type, during both burns
Stardust’s solar panels will be edge-on to the Sun and the spacecraft will
operate solely on battery power.
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:
