Stardust Status Report

July 27, 2001

There were two Deep Space Network (DSN) tracking passes this week and all subsystems are performing normally.

The Cometary and Interstellar Dust Analyzer (CIDA) continues to observe the interstellar dust stream with an optimal spacecraft attitude, when not in communication with Earth.

The Spacecraft Test Laboratory (STL) computer, located on the ground in Denver, Colorado, that went down at the end of last week, was brought back up by replacing a board. The Stardust project is in search of an old SGI Challenger series computer that has more capability than our current but even older SGI Onyx computer. Both share the same operating system.

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