STARDUST Status Report

November 5, 1999

The STARDUST spacecraft continues to perform normally in cruise sequence SC010. This past week has been quiet again, with only one Deep Space Network tracking session. Cruise sequence SC011 was uplinked during the track on November 2. The sequence will begin execution on November 8. A second planned tracking session on October 30 was given to the Mars Polar Lander project. A small patch is being made to the attitude dead-banding to prepare for the Navigation Camera images downlink, which will be transmitted to Earth using the High Gain Antenna (HGA) and the Deep Space Network's 70 meter antenna in Goldstone, California on November 21. Work continues on the flight software patch to fix a multiple thruster firings issue when in All-Stellar mode. A meeting to discuss strategy on the Dust Flux Monitor Instrument (DFMI) was held in Chicago on November 4.

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