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NASA's Stardust Spacecraft Completes Comet Flyby

Mission controllers at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., watched as data downlinked from the Stardust spacecraft indicated it completed its closest approach with comet Tempel 1. An hour after closest approach, the spacecraft turned to point its large, high-gain antenna at Earth. It is expected that images of the comet's nucleus collected during the flyby will be received on Earth starting at about midnight California time (3 a.m. EST on Tuesday, Feb. 15).
Preliminary data already transmitted from the spacecraft indicate the time of closest approach was about 8:39 p.m. PST (11:39 p.m. EST), at a distance of 181 kilometers (112 miles) from Tempel 1.
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Stardust-NExT
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On its last few litres, spacecraft goes for the history double

With only a cup of fuel left, a spacecraft the size of an office desk will make history today for the second time.
Launched 12 years ago as Stardust, it was the first spacecraft to collect dust particles from a comet, Wild 2, and then drop them back to Earth in a capsule.
This afternoon the spacecraft, now named Stardust-NExT, will complete its second and last NASA mission: to fly past the comet Tempel 1.
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Blobrana


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NASA Spacecraft Hours From Comet Encounter

As of today, Feb. 14, at 9:21 a.m. PST (12:21 p.m. EST), NASA's Stardust-NExT mission spacecraft is within 402,336 kilometers of its quarry, comet Tempel 1, which it will fly by tonight. The spacecraft is cutting the distance with the comet at a rate of about 10.9 kilometers per second.
The flyby of Tempel 1 will give scientists an opportunity to look for changes on the comet's surface since it was visited by NASA's Deep Impact spacecraft in July 2005. Since then, Tempel 1 has completed one orbit of the sun, and scientists are looking forward to discovering any differences in the comet.
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Blobrana


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It's been seven years since the original Stardust danced with Wild 2 out beyond the orbit of Mars, capturing a thimbleful of comet dust in its collector. It's been five years since the craft jettisoned its sample-return capsule and its precious cargo for a landing in the Utah desert.
Next Monday the probe will make history again in a 125-mile embrace with comet Tempel 1. It will be the first time two different comets have been surveyed with the same set of scientific instruments. And Tempel 1, explored by NASA's Deep Impact mission in 2005, will be the first comet to be visited by two spacecraft.
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NASA Stardust Adjusts Flight Path for Comet Meetup

Just over two weeks before its flyby of comet Tempel 1, NASA's Stardust spacecraft fired its thrusters to help refine its flight path toward the comet. The Stardust-NExT mission will fly past comet Tempel 1 on Valentine's Day (Feb. 14, 2011).
The trajectory correction manoeuvre, which adjusts the spacecraft's flight path, began at about 4 p.m. EST (1:00 p.m. PST) on Monday, Jan. 31. The Stardust spacecraft's rockets fired for 130 seconds, consumed about 300 grams (10.6 ounces) of fuel and changed the spacecraft's speed by 2.6 meters per second (about 5.8 mph).



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Blobrana


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NASA's Stardust spacecraft has downlinked its first images of comet Tempel 1, the target of a flyby planned for Valentine's Day, Feb. 14. The images were taken on Jan. 18 and 19 from a distance of 26.3 million kilometers, and 25.4 million kilometers respectively. On Feb. 14, Stardust will fly within about 200 kilometers of the comet's nucleus.
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Stardust-NExT mission
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NASA Spacecraft Prepares For Valentine's Day Comet Rendezvous

NASA's Stardust-NExT spacecraft is nearing a celestial date with comet Tempel 1 at approximately 11:37 p.m. EST, on Feb. 14. The mission will allow scientists for the first time to look for changes on a comet's surface that occurred following an orbit around the sun.
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NASA Spacecraft Burns for Another Comet Flyby

Eighty-six days out from its appointment with a comet, NASA's Stardust
spacecraft fired its thrusters to help refine its flight path. The Stardust-NExT mission will fly past comet Tempel 1 next Valentine's Day (Feb. 14, 2011). It will perform NASA's second comet flyby within four months.
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Volunteer army catches interstellar dust grains

Scientists say they have caught the first pieces of interstellar dust - the fundamental building blocks of the Sun, Earth and the rest of the Solar System. The discovery required an army of volunteers, including a Canadian man who spent 15 hours a day studying images online and eventually won the interstellar lottery.
The minute specks of dust were collected by NASA's Stardust spacecraft, which launched in 1999 with the aim of catching pristine interstellar grains and bringing them back to Earth.
The discovery validates four years of effort from more than 27,000 volunteers around the world, who searched 71 million images of the material captured in the Stardust collecting trays.
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The Stardust-NExT probe
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NASA's Stardust Burns for Comet, Less Than a Year Away

Just three days shy of one year before its planned flyby of comet Tempel 1, NASA's Stardust spacecraft has successfully performed a manoeuvre to adjust the time of its encounter by eight hours and 20 minutes. The delay maximises the probability of the spacecraft capturing high-resolution images of the desired surface features of the 2.99-kilometre-wide potato-shaped mass of ice and dust.
With the spacecraft on the opposite side of the solar system and beyond the orbit of Mars, the trajectory correction manoeuvre began at 22:21 GMT on Feb. 17. Stardust's rockets fired for 22 minutes and 53 seconds, changing the spacecraft's speed by 24 meters per second.
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