The Stardust spacecraft, scheduled to launch on February 6, 1999 on a Delta rocket, will fly to the Comet Wild 2, collect a sample of the comet coma, and bring it back to Earth. Cometary material is of great interest, thought to be the original material out of which our Universe was made. Besides taking pictures of the comet from as close as 150 km, the spacecraft will fly through the coma and collect particles in a special low density aerogel, a porous silica material having one thousandths the density of glass.

On its way to the comet the spacecraft will execute a loop in space, returning for a flyby of Earth in order to gain enough energy for the journey. It carries an Earth reentry capsule into which the cosmic material will be transferred prior to reentry and landing in the USA. The spacecraft, fabricated by Lockheed Martin, has contributions from a number of organizations around the country and internationally, and is presently at the cape being prepared for launch. Stardust is one of the new Discovery class missions characterized by low cost and low mass. Tom Duxbury has degrees in science and engineering and has been at JPL for many years. He has worked on a number of planetary missions in the area of science and mission design, integration of science instruments and assembly operations.