Stardust Status Report

March 1, 2002

There were two Deep Space Network (DSN) passes during the past week and all subsystems are normal. Stardust is currently 2.69 AU (250 million miles, or 402 million kilometers) from the Sun.

The currently active sequence contains only short DSN passes in order to ensure that the battery state of charge does not go below 80 percent. The longest DSN pass is 2 hours 15 minutes while the shortest pass is 2 hours 5 minutes. The Principal Investigator participated with the Outreach Manager in a web chat with members of the JPL Ambassadors Program. The Stardust Outreach team submitted two items for consideration by Guinness World Records: JPL's aerogel - the lowest density solid material; and that Stardust has operated successfully the furthest from the Sun on solar power than any other spacecraft.

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