The Stardust Spacecraft Celebrates 4000 Days in Space!

The Stardust spacecraft launched on February 7, 1999 aboard a Delta II rocket.

January 21, 2010

Today, the Stardust spacecraft will celebrate 4000 days of flight and approximately 6.4 billion kilometers (4 billion miles) of travel. The original Stardust was the first U.S. space mission dedicated solely to the exploration of a comet, and the first robotic mission designed to return extraterrestrial material from outside the orbit of the Moon.

Launched on February 7, 1999, from Cape Canaveral Air Station, Florida, aboard a Delta II rocket, Stardust’s primary goal was to collect dust and carbon-based samples during its closest encounter with comet Wild 2 in January 2004 and return those particles back to Earth for further analysis in January 2006.

Additionally, the Stardust spacecraft brought back samples of interstellar dust, including recently discovered dust streaming into our Solar System from the direction of Sagittarius.These primordial materials are believed to consist of ancient pre-solar interstellar grains and remnants from the formation of the Solar System. Analysis of such fascinating celestial specks has already yielded important insights into the evolution of the Sun, its planets, and possibly even the origin of life itself.

	Carrying the collected particles, the capsule returned to Earth Jan. 15, 2006, landing in Utah.

In July 2007, the spacecraft was taken out of hibernation and re-commissioned on an exciting new journey to rediscover comet Tempel 1. The mission, New Exploration of Tempel 1 (a.k.a. Stardust-NExT), will rendezvous with comet Tempel 1, take images and compare data previously taken by the Deep Impact spacecraft. A goal of the mission is to capture an image(s) of the crater made by Deep Impact’s copper projectile back in July 2005. This encounter opportunity is the first of its kind and allows scientists to document terrain changes caused by the comet’s close approach to the Sun on successive occasions.