Stardust Status Report

June 13, 2003

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

The navigation team is preparing for the upcoming Deep Space Maneuver. This will be a two-part maneuver with the first burn taking place on June 17, and the second on June 18. Each one of these burns will be 25-minutes in length. As with previous maneuvers of this type, during both burns Stardust's solar panels will be edge-on to the Sun and the spacecraft will operate solely on battery power.

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