Stardust Status Report May 9, 2003
This past week, the Stardust flight team used the antennas of JPL’s Deep
Space Network on three occasions. Data relayed from the spacecraft during
that contact indicated Stardust is healthy and all subsystems continue to
run normally.
A data transfer test was successfully performed with the Cometary
Interplanetary Dust Analyzer (CIDA) instrument. The CIDA science team
now compresses their data prior to transferring it to be downlinked.
Also a flight software patch was developed and installed on the spacecraft to
correct a read delay parameter that was set incorrectly. This test
verified that compressed CIDA data can be transferred without errors.
Two Network Simplification Plan (NSP) demonstration Deep Space Network
passes were successfully conducted at the Canberra and Goldstone stations.
Information on the relative positions 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:
