Stardust Status Report

October 10, 2003

The Stardust team had three periods 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.

There are 84 days remaining until the Comet Wild 2 encounter in January 2004.

STARDUST successfully exited from solar conjunction on October 7. Navigation Camera calibration images were taken on October 8.

The testing of the Comet Wild 2 encounter sequence is continuing in the Spacecraft Test Laboratory.

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