MEDIA RELATIONS OFFICE
JET PROPULSION LABORATORY
CALIFORNIA INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY
NATIONAL AERONAUTICS AND SPACE ADMINISTRATION
PASADENA, CALIFORNIA 91109. TELEPHONE (818) 354-5011
NASA’s Stardust spacecraft has successfully completed a
three-part deep space maneuver designed to keep it on target for
an Earth gravity assist in January 2001. That gravity assist
will propel the spacecraft toward its 2004 rendezvous with the
Comet Wild-2.
The maneuver consisted of a trio of propulsion firings
performed on January 18, 20 and 22 to achieve velocity changes of
58, 52, and 48 meters per second, respectively (about 130, 116
and 107 miles per hour). Each firing lasted for about 30
minutes. With these three engine burns plus a short firing of 11
meters per second (25 miles per hour) made in late December, the
flight team changed the spacecraft velocity by about 171 meters
per second (383 miles per hour), and put Stardust on target for
next year’s swingby of Earth.
Stardust’s mission is to collect samples of comet dust from
Wild-2 for return to Earth in 2006. While en route, the
spacecraft will also attempt to gather samples of interstellar
dust particles for study on Earth. Engineers plan to command
Stardust to extend its dust collector on February 22 in order to
begin collecting interstellar dust from a stream that flows into
our solar system.
Stardust was launched on February 7, 1999. The principal
investigator for the Stardust mission is Dr. Donald C. Brownlee
of the University of Washington. The mission is managed by NASA’s
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, CA, for NASA’s Office of
Space Science, Washington, DC. Lockheed Martin Astronautics,
Denver, CO, built and operates the spacecraft. Its instruments
were provided by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, the University of
Chicago, and the Max Planck Institute, Garching, Germany. JPL is
a division of the California Institute of Technology, Pasadena,
Calif.
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