Stardust Status Report

July 18, 2003

The Stardust team had seven 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.

Trajectory Correction Maneuver 9 was successfully completed on July 16. The 1 meter per second burn took about forty-three seconds to complete. Post-burn analysis indicates burn maneuver was right on the money. After the maneuver, the Cometary Interplanetary Dust Analyzer instrument was returned to operations. The Cometary Interplanetary Dust Analyzer was powered off for Deep Space Maneuver 3, which occurred back on June 17 and 18. The analyzer will now remain operational until after the Comet Wild 2 encounter.

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