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Mission Status 2008
Kevin V. Gilliland Stardust Spacecraft Team
December 17, 2008
All subsystems are nominal. Stardust NExT made contact again today, and daily contacts will continue as we approach Earth. The Navigation Camera calibration continues. Analysis of recent images show that the heating of the camera provided over the past week has worked to clear contamination. Imaging will continue this week with mosaics taken of several star targets. Last week's test of the Dust Flux Monitor (DFM) was successful, and demonstrated the instrument is healthy and will be ready for Encounter in February, 2011. Four weeks from today, Stardust will fly by Earth. The spacecraft is now less than 17,000,000 km away. On January 14, 2009, Stardust will pass by at an altitude of approximately 9,200 km.
December 10, 2008
All subsystems are nominal. The Navcam heaters are on, and the spacecraft was turned on 12/9 to place the Sun on the camera radiator for 30 minutes for additional heating to support the bakeout. This is being done in preparation for the Navcam calibration images to be taken the week of 12/15. Sequence testing for the January Earth flyby and associated activities is under way. The Dust Flux Monitor instrument was turned on today, and operated as expected, confirming a 50 minute operating window, consistent with its previously observed performance. The new Stardust NExT website is now up, and contains details of the NExT mission, Stardust's primary mission, and other comet science: http://stardustnext.jpl.nasa.gov
Upcoming events:
12/15 – Navcam calibration images
1/12 – Periscope characterization (moon images)
1/13 – TCM-25
1/14 – Earth Flyby
November 12, 2008
All subsystems are nominal. Stardust NExT's most recent contact ended just before midnight Tuesday, Denver time. More passes are scheduled for Thursday, November 13, and Friday, November 14. The final design of TCM-23 has been built into command products and the STL testing is complete. The commands will be radiated Monday, November 17, and the burn begins Tuesday, November 18, at 9:00 AM Denver time. This week's activities included the beginning of the spacecraft battery characterization. As the battery ages, its full state-of-charge behavior changes. Upcoming activities will require deeper battery discharge than is required to support nominal cruising. Power and Thermal engineers are working together to analyze the battery's response to changes in pressure.Background sequence SN017 is the active sequence.
October 8, 2008
All subsystems are nominal. Stardust-NExT made contact yesterday, October 7. The spacecraft successfully transmitted all of the data produced and recorded in the three weeks since the previous contact. The spacecraft memory was reconfigured to reduce the fragmentation in the available blocks of memory. NExT will execute a trajectory correction, TCM-23, on November 18. Contacts will become more frequent after a summer of monthly contacts. Next week, 5 passes are scheduled. NExT is 1.41 AU from the Sun and 0.61 AU from Earth. Background sequence SN016 is the active sequence; SN017 is in development.
