Stardust Status Report

March 28, 2003

This past week, the Stardust flight team used the antennas of JPL's Deep Space Network on two occasions. Data relayed from the spacecraft during that contact indicated Stardust is healthy and all subsystems continue to run normally.

On March 22, Stardust successfully transmitted the remaining images of the Pleiades star cluster stored in the spacecraft's memory. The Pleiades images were taken by Stardust's navigation camera. Stardust's Optical Navigation and Image Science Teams report image quality to be very good.

The educational and public outreach office of Stardust will partner up with the Deep Space Network and the JPL Asian American Committee for the 2nd Annual Pasadena Cherry Blossom Festival. Those festival goers in attendance had the opportunity to see Stardust's new mission banners, as well as a cube of aerogel, and receive handouts detailing the Stardust mission.

Information on the present position and orbits of the Stardust spacecraft and Comet Wild 2 may be found on the "Where Is Stardust Right Now?" web page located at:

http://stardust.jpl.nasa.gov/mission/scnow.html

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