Stardust Status Report

April 25, 2003

Stardust exited its 'solar conjunction period' on April 18. Solar conjunction period is the interval of time where the Sun obscures the line of sight between Earth and the spacecraft, making it virtually impossible to transmit radio signals between the two.

The Stardust team enjoyed two periods of communications with the spacecraft in the past week. Telemetry relayed from the spacecraft indicates it is healthy and all subsystems continue to operate normally.

The Stardust Education and Public Outreach supported a two-day Sally Ride Festival in Kansas, Missouri on comet modeling.

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