Stardust Status Report

May 9, 2003

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

A data transfer test was successfully performed with the Cometary Interplanetary Dust Analyzer (CIDA) instrument. The CIDA science team now compresses their data prior to transferring it to be downlinked. Also a flight software patch was developed and installed on the spacecraft to correct a read delay parameter that was set incorrectly. This test verified that compressed CIDA data can be transferred without errors.

Two Network Simplification Plan (NSP) demonstration Deep Space Network passes were successfully conducted at the Canberra and Goldstone stations.

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