[meteorite-list] NASA Stardust Adjusts Flight Path for Comet Meetup

From: Ron Baalke <baalke_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Tue, 1 Feb 2011 16:25:36 -0800 (PST)
Message-ID: <201102020025.p120PaJA018725_at_zagami.jpl.nasa.gov>

http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.cfm?release=2011-033

NASA Stardust Adjusts Flight Path for Comet Meetup
Jet Propulsion Laboratory
February 01, 2011

Stardust-Next Mission Status

PASADENA, Calif. - 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 maneuver, 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).

"An almost six-miles-per-hour change may seem insignificant when we're
closing in on the comet at 24,236 miles per hour [39,000 kilometers per
hour]," said Tim Larson, Stardust-NExT project manager at NASA's Jet
Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. "But we're still two weeks and
8.37 million miles [13.5 million kilometers] away from the comet. At
that distance, our burn will move our location at time of closest
approach to the comet by almost 1,900 miles [3,058 kilometers]. By
observing the results of these planned maneuvers and making further
rocket burns, that's how we get a spacecraft to be where we want it,
when it's on the other side of the solar system."

NASA's plan for the Stardust-NExT mission is to fly the spacecraft to
target a point in space about 200 kilometers (124 miles) from comet
Tempel 1 at the time of its closest approach ??? about 8:56 p.m. PST on
Feb. 14 (11:56 p.m. EST). This is a bonus mission for the comet chaser,
which previously flew past comet Wild 2 and returned particles from its
coma to Earth. During this bonus encounter, the spacecraft will take
images of the comet's surface to observe what changes have occurred
since a NASA spacecraft last visited. (NASA's Deep Impact executed an
encounter with Tempel 1 in July 2005).

Along with the high-resolution images of the comet's surface,
Stardust-NExT will also measure the composition, size distribution and
flux of dust emitted into the coma, and provide important new
information on how Jupiter-family comets evolve and how they formed 4.6
billion years ago. A Jupiter-family comet is a comet whose orbit has
been modified by close passages to Jupiter. They have orbital periods
less than 20 years.

Launched on Feb. 7, 1999, Stardust became the first spacecraft in
history to collect samples from a comet (Wild 2), and return them to
Earth for study. While its sample return capsule parachuted to Earth in
January 2006, mission controllers were placing the still-viable
spacecraft on a path that would allow NASA the opportunity to re-use the
already-proven flight system if a target of opportunity presented
itself. In January 2007, NASA re-christened the mission "Stardust-NExT"
(New Exploration of Tempel), and the Stardust team began a
four-and-a-half year journey for the spacecraft to comet Tempel 1. This
will be the second exploration of Tempel 1 by a spacecraft (Deep Impact).

Stardust-NExT is a low-cost mission that will expand the investigation
of comet Tempel 1 initiated by NASA's Deep Impact spacecraft. JPL, a
division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages
Stardust-NExT for the NASA Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C.
Joe Veverka of Cornell University, Ithaca, N.Y., is the mission's
principal investigator. Lockheed Martin Space Systems, Denver, built the
spacecraft and manages day-to-day mission operations.

For more information about Stardust-NExT, please visit:
http://stardustnext.jpl.nasa.gov .

DC Agle 818-393-9011
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.
agle at jpl.nasa.gov

Dwayne Brown 202-358-1726
NASA Headquarters, Washington
Dwayne.c.brown at nasa.gov

2011-033
Received on Tue 01 Feb 2011 07:25:36 PM PST