STARDUST Status Report

October 8, 1999

The STARDUST spacecraft continues to perform normally with the flight team at Lockheed Martin Astronautics (LMA) concentrating on downlinking science and engineering data as well as sending commands needed to go to All Stellar attitude control during the next few weeks. This is the last week in cruise sequence SC009 with cruise sequence SC010 starting next Monday.

A problem with the Navigation Camera Engineering Model (NCEM) in the LMA Spacecraft Test Laboratory (STL) has been traced to a bad cable connection. The final testing of the priority inversion flight software patch and the Navigation Camera retest sequence have now been initiated with a fully operational STL including the NCEM.

The STARDUST operations and science team met with the Deep Space 1 Project to obtain "lessons learned" from their asteroid flyby as related to our comet flyby. Camera calibration, sequence testing in STL and flight and contingency planning were some of the major highlights of the discussion.

The Education and Public Outreach activities continue at a high and productive level. The Request for Proposal for managing the current "Education Fellows" Program has been released by JPL. Also STARDUST is supporting the NASA Office of Space Science Exhibit at the California Science Teachers Association Conference in Long Beach, California which expects to have over 20,000 participants.

In the area of Technology Transfer, the production of carbon aerogel for testing of the Mars Non-Ablative Aeroshell has begun. A new technique for accomplishing the gelation of the precursor resorcinol-formaldehyde organic wet gels has been developed.

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