Stardust Status Report March 28, 2003
This past week, the Stardust flight team used the antennas of JPL’s Deep
Space Network on two occasions. Data relayed from the spacecraft during
that contact indicated Stardust is healthy and all subsystems continue to
run normally.
On March 22, Stardust successfully transmitted the remaining images of the
Pleiades star cluster stored in the spacecraft’s memory. The Pleiades
images were taken by Stardust’s navigation camera. Stardust’s Optical
Navigation and Image Science Teams report image quality to be very good.
The educational and public outreach office of Stardust will partner up with
the Deep Space Network and the JPL Asian American Committee for the 2nd
Annual Pasadena Cherry Blossom Festival. Those festival goers in attendance
had the opportunity to see Stardust’s new mission banners, as well as a
cube of aerogel, and receive handouts detailing the Stardust mission.
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:
