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Stardust Status Report
March 28, 2003

This past week, the Stardust flight team used the antennas of JPL's
Deep Space Network on two occasions. Data relayed from the spacecraft
during that contact indicated Stardust is healthy and all subsystems
continue to run normally.
 
On March 22, Stardust successfully transmitted the remaining images
of the Pleiades star cluster stored in the spacecraft's memory. The
Pleiades images were taken by Stardust's navigation camera.
Stardust's Optical Navigation and Image Science Teams report image
quality to be very good.

The educational and public outreach office of Stardust will partner
up with the Deep Space Network and the JPL Asian American Committee
for the 2nd Annual Pasadena Cherry Blossom Festival. Those festival
goers in attendance had the opportunity to see Stardust's new mission
banners, as well as a cube of aerogel, and receive handouts detailing
the Stardust mission. 

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 .

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