Stardust 2009

[MeteorWayne]

<p>Sorry, I missed this yesterday, from Emily Lakdawalla's TPS blog:</p><p><strong>Jan. 14, 2009 | 12:26 PST | 20:26 UTC</strong> </p><h2 class="sIFR-replaced"><span class="sIFR-alternate">Stardust flies by Earth today</span></h2><div class="small">Permalink: http://www.planetary.org/blog/article/00001808/</div><p><br />In less than two hours, Stardust will approach to within 10,000 kilometers of Earth, getting a gravity assist that will target it for a February 14, 2011 encounter with comet Tempel 1, once the target of the Deep Impact mission. This page from the Stardust-NExT mission (the official name of Stardust's extended mission to Tempel 1) says that just before the flyby, the spacecraft was commanded to take some calibration photos targeting the Moon. There was some concern that during Stardust's original mission, when it flew through the coma of comet Wild-2, the mirrors on its periscope may have gotten pitted by cometary particles, which would have reduced the quality of its camera's images. (Stardust has the periscope to make sure that the camera's optics aren't themselves flying face-on into cometary particles, so that if anything got damaged, it would be the mirrors in the periscope, not the camera itself.) Here are two photos of the Moon taken two days ago, with and without the periscope in the optical path. (The Stardust website did not actually indicate which of these images was taken with the periscope, and which without.)</p><p>http://www.planetary.org/blog/article/00001808/</p><p>Here's the Stardust page she referred to, in case the link doesn't come through intact:</p><p>http://stardustnext.jpl.nasa.gov/mission/ega.html</p> <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> <p><font color="#000080"><em><font color="#000000">But the Krell forgot one thing John. Monsters. Monsters from the Id.</font></em> </font></p><p><font color="#000080">I really, really, really, really miss the "first unread post" function</font><font color="#000080"> </font></p> </div>

 

[rybanis]

<p>Cool pictures!</p><p>&nbsp;I love the concept behind this mission. Talk about getting bang for your buck.&nbsp; </p> <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> </div>