STARDUST Status Report

September 10, 1999

The STARDUST spacecraft continues to perform well as it is successfully completing cruise sequence SC008. Sequence SC009 starts next Monday. The Flight Team at Lockheed Martin Astronautics (LMA) has been commanding the spacecraft to place updated downlink priority tables, configuration tables, telemetry content definitions and algorithm parameter values from Dynamic Random Access Memory (DRAM) to Command & Data Handling Module Interface Card (CMIC) memory. These commanded changes have now been thoroughly validated during flight and will now become part of the default spacecraft reset state. Without being in CMIC memory, all of these past commands would have to be restored if the spacecraft would reset itself.

LMA has tested and transmitted the commands to turn on the Dust Flux Monitor Instrument (DFMI) and Cometary and Interstellar Dust Analyzer (CIDA) heaters in preparation for turning on these payload instruments next week. Sequence SC009 has also been transmitted to the spacecraft which will be implemented on Monday. Downlink has continued to be excellent with small forces and other engineering data being received as well as navigation doppler and ranging tracking data.

The STARDUST Project participated in a special concert at the Hollywood Bowl specially written and performed to honor the Jet Propulsion Laboratory and its space exploration activities.

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