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Stardust Spacecraft Executes Test Flyby of Asteroid Annefrank
By SPACE.com Staff
posted: 09:45 am ET
04 November 2002
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Headline: NASA's Stardust spacecraft successfully completed a close flyby Saturday of an asteroid named Annefrank. The event was used as a dress rehearsal of procedures the spacecraft will use during its Jan. 2, 2004, encounter with it primary science target, comet Wild 2. Stardust passed within about 2,050 miles (3,300 kilometers) of the asteroid, which is about 4 kilometers (2.5 miles) across. Radio signals confirming the basic health of the spacecraft after the flyby were received about 30 minutes later via an antenna at the Canberra, Australia, complex of NASA's Deep Space Network, said Thomas Duxbury, project manager for Stardust at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif. JPL manages the mission for NASA. Stardust visually tracked the asteroid for 30 minutes as it flew by at a relative speed of about 4 miles per second (7 kilometers per second). No images have been released, however. Although no dust was anticipated near the asteroid, the spacecraft's dust counter and other instruments were in use as they will be at Wild 2. Images and information from the flyby period are being transmitted from the spacecraft today and through this week. Stardust's scientists and engineers are analyzing the data to maximize the probability of success during the 2004 encounter with comet Wild 2, NASA officials said in a statement. Stardust will bring samples of comet dust back to Earth in 2006 to help answer fundamental questions about the origins of the solar system.
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