JPL: Stardust Burns for Comet, Less Than a Year Away

[bystander]

Stardust Burns for Comet, Less Than a Year Away
NASA JPL 2010-055 - 2010 Feb 18

Just three days shy of one year before its planned flyby of comet Tempel 1, NASA's Stardust spacecraft has successfully performed a maneuver to adjust the time of its encounter by eight hours and 20 minutes. The delay maximizes the probability of the spacecraft capturing high-resolution images of the desired surface features of the 2.99-kilometer-wide (1.86 mile) potato-shaped mass of ice and dust.

[bystander]

Stardust spacecraft may have found cosmic dust
PhysOrg Space Exploration: 2010 March 08

The first specks of interstellar dust may have been found by NASA's Stardust spacecraft during its seven-year-long voyage. Interstellar dust is believed to form from gas ejected from stars, which condenses to form tiny specks or grains. These then flow through space and contain the heavy atoms that are thought to form the building blocks of stars and planets.

http://stardust.jpl.nasa.gov/home/index.html

[geckzilla]

Man, they've been at that for a long time now. I still remember a few years back getting the link from APOD to the stardust@home citizen science project and combing through a few thousand images before giving up.