Stardust Status Report

April 5, 2002

There were two Deep Space Network tracking passes during the past week and all subsystems are normal. Stardust is currently 2.71 AU (almost 252 million miles, or 405 million kilometers) from the Sun.

The spacecraft's power subsystems continue to perform better than predicted. The battery's charge state at the conclusion of the last DSN pass was 94 percent.

After 33 years at JPL, Dr. Kenneth L. Atkins has retired. Ken was Stardust's Project Manager during its development and initial operations phases. His management leadership at the laboratory has left us with a rich heritage, including the excellently operating Stardust 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