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Stardust Status Report
April 18, 2003

Over the past week, the Stardust team completed the first Comet Wild
2 encounter sequence test in the Spacecraft Test Laboratory. This
testing is in support of Stardust's historic encounter with Comet
Wild 2 in January of next year. 

The success of last year's Annefrank flyby is still positively
affecting the Stardust mission.  Stardust made a close pass of
asteroid Annefrank back on November 2, 2002. During this flyby many
spacecraft functions that will be employed during Stardust's
encounter with Comet Wild 2, were proven to be operational. This
positive confirmation of both the vehicle and team's performance now
allows the Stardust team to look beyond the Wild 2 encounter to the
challenging operations required for Earth return in 2006. 

Information on the relative positions 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 .

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