Stardust Status Report

June 27, 2003

The Stardust team had eight 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 1 Astronomical Unit Engineering Activities have successfully started.This series of activities will provide valuable data and reduce the uncertainty during the sample return capsule's release and Earth return on January 15, 2006. One of the activities that will take place entails placing the spacecraft in the 'sample return capsule release attitude' and measuring the small forces, solar pressure and thruster firings, that occur while at that attitude.

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