MEDIA RELATIONS OFFICE
JET PROPULSION LABORATORY
CALIFORNIA INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY
NATIONAL AERONAUTICS AND SPACE ADMINISTRATION
PASADENA, CALIF. 91109 TELEPHONE (818) 354-5011
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov
Stardust Mission Status
November 2, 2002
NASA's Stardust spacecraft successfully completed a close flyby of
asteroid Annefrank early today as an opportunity for a full dress
rehearsal of procedures the spacecraft will use during its Jan. 2,
2004, encounter with it primary science target, comet Wild 2.
Annefrank is about 4 kilometers (2.5 miles) across. Stardust passed
within about 3,300 kilometers (2,050 miles) of the asteroid at 04:50
today, Universal Time (8:50 p.m. Nov. 1, Pacific Standard Time). Radio
signals confirming the basic health of the spacecraft after the flyby
were received about 30 minutes later via an antenna at the Canberra,
Australia, complex of NASA's Deep Space Network, said Thomas Duxbury,
project manager for Stardust at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory,
Pasadena, Calif.
Stardust visually tracked the asteroid for 30 minutes as it flew by at
a relative speed of about 7 kilometers (4 miles) per second, a major
goal of this test opportunity. Although no dust was anticipated near
the asteroid, the spacecraft's dust instruments were in use as they
will be at Wild 2: the dust collector was open and the dust counter
from the University of Chicago and dust mass spectrometer from Germany
were turned on.
Images and information from the flyby period are being transmitted
from the spacecraft today and through the coming week. Stardust's
scientists and engineers are analyzing the data to maximize the
probability of success during the 2004 encounter with comet Wild 2.
Stardust will bring samples of comet dust back to Earth in 2006 to
help answer fundamental questions about the origins of the solar
system. The mission's principal investigator is Prof. Donald Brownlee,
an astronomer at the University of Washington, Seattle. Lockheed
Martin Astronautics, Denver, Colo., built and operates the Stardust
spacecraft. Additional information is available online at
http://stardust.jpl.nasa.gov
Stardust is a part of NASA's Discovery Program of low-cost, highly
focused science missions. JPL, a division of the California Institute
of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA's Office of
Space Science, Washington, D.C.
