Stardust Spacecraft

The Stardust Spacecraft was launched Feb 7, 1999 on a Boeing Delta II vehicle.

The Stardust mission spacecraft is derived from the deep space bus developed by Lockheed Martin Astronautics. This new lightweight spacecraft 

Encounter with Wild 2

incorporates components, virtually all of which are either currently operating in space or are flight qualified and manifested to fly on upcoming missions.

The total weight of the spacecraft including the propellant needed for deep space maneuvers is 380 kilograms. The overall length of the main bus is 1.7 meters, about the size of an average office desk.

The STARDUST spacecraft is scheduled to encounter comet Wild 2 early in 2004 and will collect samples of cometary dust and volatiles while flying through the coma at a distance of approximately 100 km on the sunlit side of the nucleus. It will then return the samples to Earth for analysis in 2006.

Reference:

• 
  http://stardust.jpl.nasa.gov/spacecraft/scsystems.html

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Updated: Sunday 13th, April, 2008