STARDUST Status Report

August 27, 1999

STARDUST has had a quiet cruise period for the past week. We had some extra tracking coverage for the delayed All-Stellar transition, so when Deep Space 1 (DS1) needed some help for their safe-mode recovery, we helped out by giving them our track on August 24.

The spacecraft remains in a nominal mode, the Cometary Interstellar Dust Analyzer (CIDA) and Dust Flux Monitor (DFM) instruments are powered off.

The two flight software patches to reset the subsystems in the event of an interrupt fault occuring, are ready to be put onboard. The Payload and Attitude Control Interface (PACI) fault detection patch will be uplinked on Friday night.

Some priority decisions were made last Monday; first, to move the All-Stellar transition to after Mars Climate Orbiter orbit insertion, to a window between October 4 and 24. The Dust Flux Monitor (DFM) will be cycled on for a checkout of the internal power converter on September 13. The Navigation Camera image checkout will be done on September 17, with playback on October 14. Trajectory Correction Maneuver A (TCM-A) was dropped from October 14, with the trajectory correction to be done during Deep Space Maneuver #1 (DSM-1) in January; which is the original plan.

We are in background flight sequence SC008, which runs for four weeks, and are building SC009, the next 4 week sequence.

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