STARDUST Status Report

June 17, 1999

The single communication session during the last week found the spacecraft and all subsystems operating normally.

Lockheed Martin Astronautics (LMA) has completed the sequence generation, testing and commanding of flight sequence SC006 which starts next week. Additional commands which have been developed and are being tested include: commanding the Solar Array Switching Unit (SASU) from its current series connection of the solar panels to a parallel connection giving more power to the spacecraft as it continues to move further away from the Sun; new High Gain Antenna and Medium Gain Antenna block commands to make spacecraft communications through either of these antennae only a single command away; reducing the amount of spacecraft clock tick information being provided to telemetry; and increasing the storage time of packets onboard before automatic deletion from 3 weeks to 9 weeks since the communication sessions have been reduced considerably since launch.

Outreach supported the Idaho Project Search, a Teacher's Workshop from K through 12, sponsored by the Idaho Space Consortium.

For more information on the STARDUST mission - the first ever comet sample return mission - please visit the STARDUST home page: