Stardust Status Report September 14, 2001
There was one Deep Space Network (DSN) tracking pass this week and all
subsystems are healthy. Two flight software patches were sent up to
the spacecraft, verified and stored into permanent (CMIC) memory.
Also three other flight software patches that have been up and
operating successfully for a few weeks were also stored into CMIC
memory. In the event of a future computer reset, these patches will
not have to be retransmitted to the spacecraft but will
automatically be operational after the reset.
Because of the large distance from Earth to the spacecraft, the
radiometric ranging data has been showing signs of increasing noise.
The ranging mod was set to high to improve the ranging
signal-to-noise ratio and will be left at high for the next year
as the STARDUST spacecraft is in the main asteroid belt.
For more information on the Stardust mission — the first ever
comet sample return mission — please visit the Stardust home page:
