Stardust Status Report

January 11, 2002

There were two Deep Space Network tracking passes in the past week and all subsystems are performing normally. Stardust reached its maximum distance, 3.594 AU (334 million miles, or 538 million kilometers) from Earth. A signal takes 59 minutes 47 seconds to travel from Earth to spacecraft and back to Earth.

Preparations for Deep Space Maneuver 2 (DSM-2), scheduled for next week, are in the final stages. DSM 2, also the seventh trajectory correction maneuver, will be a 2.65-meter-per-second (5.9-mile-per-hour) burn.

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