Stardust Status Report July 25, 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.

On Wednesday July 23, Stardust successfully completed its second orbit around the sun and has started its third and final orbit.

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. The remainder of this year will be spent in testing and training for encounter together with a formal critical events readiness review in November.

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: http://stardust.jpl.nasa.gov .