Stardust Status Report

October 19, 2001

Stardust Gets an "A" in Command Performance

There was one Deep Space Network communications session this past week and all subsystems are performing normally. The spacecraft is 2.4 AU from the Sun. Though it is so far out, it has not required to use the battery yet to support communications with Earth, since the solar arrays continue to produce more than enough power.

A review of command history performance over the entire 2.7-year flight mission was held and command success has been 99.5 percent. Procedures have been implemented to increase this success rate.

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