Mission controllers placed the still viable Stardust spacecraft on a trajectory that could potentially reuse the flight system if a target of opportunity presented itself.
Samples were returned in 2006 for study via a capsule that detached from the spacecraft and parachuted to the ground southwest of Salt Lake City. In 2004, the Stardust mission became the first to collect particles directly from comet Wild 2, as well as interstellar dust. The spacecraft is expected to fly past the nearly 6-kilometer-wide comet (3.7 miles) at a distance of approximately 200 kilometers (124 miles). Tempel 1's orbit takes it as close in to the sun as the orbit of Mars and almost as far away as the orbit of Jupiter. Since 2007, Stardust-NExT executed eight flight path correction maneuvers, logged four circuits around the sun and used one Earth gravity assist to meet up with Tempel 1.Īnother three maneuvers are planned to refine the spacecraft's path to the comet. EST).Īs of today, the spacecraft is approximately 24.6 million kilometers (15.3 million miles) away from its encounter.
Images are expected to be available at approximately 1:30 a.m. Initial raw images from the flyby will be sent to Earth for processing that will begin at approximately midnight PST (3 a.m. During the flyby, the spacecraft will take 72 images and store them in an onboard computer. "Going back for another look at Tempel 1 will provide new insights on how comets work and how they were put together four-and-a-half billion years ago."Īt approximately 336 million kilometers (209 million miles) away from Earth, Stardust-NExT will be almost on the exact opposite side of the solar system at the time of the encounter. "Every day we are getting closer and closer and more and more excited about answering some fundamental questions about comets," said Joe Veverka, Stardust-NExT principal investigator at Cornell University, Ithaca, N.Y. This would be an added bonus to the huge amount of data that mission scientists expect to obtain. The Stardust spacecraft may capture an image of the crater created by the impactor. In July 2005, the Deep Impact spacecraft delivered an impactor to the surface of Tempel 1 to study its composition. The mission will expand the investigation of the comet initiated by NASA's Deep Impact mission.
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