Stardust Status Report

February 23, 2001

There were fifteen Deep Space Network (DSN) tracking passes in the past week and all subsystems are performing normally.

A test to determine the capacity of the battery was successfully performed. Power will be limited at the next aphelion in April 2002, when Stardust will be 2.72 AU, about 408 million kilometers, from the Sun. Therefore knowledge about the battery's performance is needed now to plan operations around aphelion. The test commanded a low charge rate for approximately twenty-four hours to determine what pressure the battery reached at its maximum charge capacity. Data from this test will be used to establish new operating parameters starting when the spacecraft reaches approximately 2.4 AU from the Sun, in October 2001.

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