Stardust Status Report

October 3, 2003

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

Although the spacecraft remains in a solar conjunction phase, commands were sent to the spacecraft to determine the spacecraft communications capability in this environment. Remarkably, the spacecraft received 4 of the 5 commands. Normal commanding will begin on October 7 when the spacecraft is 3 degrees from the sun, ending the solar conjunction phase.

On October 8, 2003 Stardust's Principal Investigator, Don Brownlee, NASA, Lockheed Martin Astronautics and JPL management will review Stardust's flight plan for encounter flyby.

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