Stardust Status Report

August 22, 2003

The spacecraft is in its 2-month solar conjunction period where it is within 3 deg of the sun as viewed from earth. There is no commanding but only downlink telemetry during this period. There were no Deep Space Network passes during the past week.

The Stardust flight team held a very successful Encounter Workshop at the University of Washington this week. Among the numerous topics of conversation were optical navigation and imaging for the spacecraft's closest approach imaging strategy for the upcoming Comet Wild 2 encounter in January 2004.

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