NASA's Stardust Burns for Comet, Less Than a Year Away

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http://www.jpl.nasa.gov

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

Dwayne Brown 202-358-1726
NASA Headquarters, Washington DC
dwayne.c.brown@nasa.gov

News release: 2010-055 February 18, 2010

NASA's Stardust Burns for Comet, Less Than a Year Away

The full version of this story with accompanying images is at:
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.cfm?release=2010-055&cid=release_2010-055

PASADENA, Calif. - Just three days shy of one year before its planned flyby of comet Tempel 1,
NASA's Stardust spacecraft has successfully performed a maneuver to adjust the time of its
encounter by eight hours and 20 minutes. The delay maximizes the probability of the spacecraft
capturing high-resolution images of the desired surface features of the 2.99-kilometer-wide (1.86
mile) 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 maneuver began at 5:21 p.m. EST (2:21 p.m. PST) on Feb. 17. Stardust's rockets
fired for 22 minutes and 53 seconds, changing the spacecraft's speed by 24 meters per second (54
miles per hour).

Stardust's maneuver placed the spacecraft on a course to fly by the comet just before 8:42 p.m. PST
(11:42 p.m. EST) on Feb. 14, 2011 – Valentine's Day. Time of closest approach to Tempel 1 is
important because the comet rotates, allowing different regions of the comet to be illuminated by the
sun's rays at different times. Mission scientists want to maximize the probability that areas of interest
previously imaged by NASA's Deep Impact mission in 2005 will also be bathed in the sun's rays and
visible to Stardust's camera when it passes by.

"We could not have asked for a better result from a burn with even a brand-new spacecraft," said Tim
Larson, project manager for the Stardust-NExT at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena,
Calif. "This bird has already logged one comet flyby, one Earth return of the first samples ever
collected from deep space, over 4,000 days of flight and approximately 5.4 billion kilometers (3.4
billion miles) since launch."

Launched on Feb. 7, 1999, Stardust became the first spacecraft in history to collect samples from a
comet 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 trajectory 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 to comet Tempel
1. This will be humanity's second exploration of the comet – and the first time a comet has been "re-
visited."

"Stardust-NExT will provide scientists the first opportunity to see the surface changes on a comet
between successive visits into the inner solar system," said Joe Veverka, principal investigator of
Stardust-NExT from Cornell University, Ithaca, N.Y. "We have theories galore on how each close
pass to the sun causes changes to a comet. Stardust-NExT should give some teeth to some of these
theories, and take a bite out of others."

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.

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 is the mission's principal investigator. Lockheed Martin Space Systems,
Denver Colo., built the spacecraft and manages day-to-day mission operations.

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

-end-

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