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- http: //planetary.org/articlearchive/headlines/1998/headln-041698.html
Mission Prepares To Collect Pieces of Stardust
April 16, 1998
Earth's First Cometary Dust Sample Return Mission
Will Fly Planetary Society Member Names to a Comet
and Back
Scientists and engineers continue to prepare the
Stardust spacecraft for its February 1999 launch.
Earlier this month, Stardust Project Manager Ken
Atkins reported that mission planners continue to
make impressive progress in piecing together the
spacecraft's flight system.
Set for launch in February 1999, Stardust will be
the first US mission dedicated solely to a comet
and the first robotic return of extraterrestrial
material from outside the orbit of the Moon. Its
primary goal is to collect comet dust and volatile
samples during a planned close encounter with
comet Wild-2 in January of 2004. Aboard the
spacecraft will be a microchip that carries the
name of thousands of planetary exploration
supporters -- including all Planetary Society
members as of November 1997. These names are now
posted on line on the Stardust web site
(http://stardust.jpl.nasa.gov/microchip/names.html).
The Stardust spacecraft will also bring back
samples of interstellar dust, including the
recently discovered dust streaming into the solar
system from the direction of Sagittarius. These
materials consist of ancient pre-solar
interstellar grains and nebular condensates
including remnants left over from the formation of
the solar system. Their analysis is expected to
yield important insights into the evolution of the
Sun and planets and possibly into the origin of
life itself.
Preparing Stardust for Flight
Earlier this month, the team from Germany's Max
Planck Institute delivered the flight cometary and
interstellar dust analyzer (CIDA). Mission
engineers completed setting up the analyzer and
checking it out, testing the instrument's ability
to transmit examples of the kind of data it will
collect in flight.
The navigation camera team also made some
important progress as they completed testing and
calibrating the camera at the Jet Propulsion
Laboratory in preparation for delivery to Lockheed
Martin Astronautics in Denver, Colorado. This
camera will be used to provide pictures to the
navigators as they make the final course
corrections for the cometary flythrough. It will
also be the instrument for taking the
"up-close-and-personal" images of Comet Wild 2 as
the spacecraft cruises some 150 miles (about 240
kilometers) above the now-unknown surface of the
comet's nucleus.
The team at Lockheed Martin Astronautics also
completed some deployment testing on the
spacecraft's solar array. These tests demonstrated
how Stardust will "spread its wings" following
launch and separation from the launch rocket.
Finally, engineers reviewed a test unit of the
aerogel collector in preparation for using it to
test how we will keep it extremely clean during
its installation and launch. It is partially
loaded with examples of flight-quality aerogel.