Misson Complete for NASA’s Stardust Comet Hunter

After traveling throughout our solar system for 12 years, on a journey covering about 3.5 billion miles, NASA’s Stardust spacecraft used the last of its fuel on Thursday, bringing the crafts mission to an end. In a final command to help scientists better understand fuel consumption of their probes, Stardust used up the last of its fuel in a burn lasting a little over two minutes.

“This is the end of the spacecraft’s operations, but really just the beginnings of what this spacecraft’s accomplishments will give to planetary science,” said Lindley Johnson, Stardust-NExT and Discovery program executive at NASA Headquarters in Washington. “The treasure-trove of science data and engineering information collected and returned by Stardust is invaluable for planning future deep space planetary missions.”

Over its life, the spacecraft had visited and collected samples from several comets including Annefrank, Wild 2, and Tempel 1. As it traveled among the comets, Stardust made several fly-bys of the inner planets. On one pass by the earth, Stardust dropped off some comet samples it had gathered. The sample was jettisoned as the spacecraft passed by the earth and then recovered on the ground by scientists.

With its fuel depleted and nothing to alter its course except the gravitational pull of the sun and planets, Stardust will continue on its current flight path from its last location about 194 million miles from the Earth.

“This kind of feels like the end of one of those old western movies where you watch the hero ride his horse towards the distant setting sun — and then the credits begin to roll,” said Stardust-NExT project manager Tim Larson from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. “Only there’s no setting sun in space.”

Source: NASA