Stardust Status Report

October 18, 2002

Stardust continues to operate in good health while traversing the main asteroid belt and collecting interstellar dust. The spacecraft had two periods of radio contact through JPL's Deep Space Network this week. A patch to the flight software for tracking a comet nucleus has remained stable for two weeks of extensive testing in the Spacecraft Test Laboratory. The laboratory is also testing other encounter command products. Stardust's outreach personnel presented information about the mission during two conferences in Houston this month: the World Space Congress and the International Council for Science's Committee on Space Research.

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