Stardust Status Report

January 30, 2004

The Stardust team had daily communications with the spacecraft in the past week. Telemetry relayed from the spacecraft indicates it remains in very good shape after its close encounter of the cometary kind back on January 2.

The Stardust team is preparing for a deep space maneuver that will occur next week.

This past week, a science team teleconference was held that included both US and foreign science team members. The focus was to complete data analyses that will be presented at the Lunar and Planetary Science Conference in March.

Information on the present position and orbits of the Stardust spacecraft and Comet Wild 2 may be found on the "Where Is Stardust Right Now?" web page located at:

http://stardust.jpl.nasa.gov/mission/scnow.html

For more information on the Stardust mission -- the first ever comet sample return mission -- please visit the Stardust home page:

http://stardust.jpl.nasa.gov