Where is stardust spacecraft now

Engage With JPL. Stardust Stardust Stardust was the first spacecraft to return a cometary sample and extraterrestrial material from outside the orbit of the moon to Earth.

Mission Statistics. Launch Date Feb 07, Type Flyby Spacecraft. About the mission. The spacecraft had five major components: a heat shield, backshell, sample canister, parachute system and avionics. The spacecraft was launched into a heliocentric orbit that would bring it around the Sun and past Earth for a gravity-assist maneuver to direct it to Wild 2 after a flyby of the minor planet Annefrank in November After midcourse corrections Dec.

After approximately a year in heliocentric orbit, Stardust flew by Earth at a range of about miles or 6, kilometers Jan. On Nov.

More than a year later, on Dec. The sample collector, which had been deployed Dec. Exactly as planned, after a 2. Because of high winds, the capsule drifted north of the ground track, but fortunately, a locator beacon allowed recovery teams to find the capsule 44 minutes after landing. At UT Jan. Small Medium Large First satellite repair The mission for the crew of space shuttle Challenger's April flight was two-fold -- deploy the experiment-laden Long Duration Exposure Facility LDEF and then track down the crippled Solar Max spacecraft, capture it and perform repairs during spacewalks.

Initial attempts by the astronauts to grab the craft while wearing the Manned Maneuvering Unit spacewalk backpacks failed, but the crew ultimately retrieved Solar Max and installed fresh equipment while it was anchored in the payload bay. The crew narrates this post-flight presentation of home movies and highlights from mission STSC.

Americans finally returned to space in September when shuttle Discovery safely launched for its mission to deploy a NASA communications satellite.

Enjoy this post-flight presentation narrated by the astronauts as they show movies and tell the story of the STS mission. Small Medium Large Amazing STSI flight Imagine a space shuttle mission in which the astronaut crew launched two commercial and one military communications spacecraft, then conducted a pair of incredible spacewalks to recover, fix and redeploy a satellite that malfunctioned just four months earlier.

But even in its death throes, Stardust will yield valuable data for spacecraft engineers. Ground controllers commanded the spacecraft to fire up its four rocket thrusters one last time to use up its remaining fuel today March Engineers watched closely while the probe's propellant tank ran dry to help future missions gauge their fuel reserves more precisely.