STARDUST is the fourth NASA Discovery mission chosen to follow the auspicious heels of the Mars Pathfinder, the Near Earth Asteroid Rendezvous (NEAR), and the Lunar Prospector. The goal of NASA's Discovery Program is to launch several smaller science-focused missions with fast turn-around time, and costs of less than $150 million to build. These missions are designed to be joint efforts with the private sector, small businesses, and/or universities.

The STARDUST mission will fly approximately 100 kilometers (62 miles) of Comet Wild-2 in early 2004. STARDUST's primary function will be to collect cometary dust and volatiles for scientific research. The importance of samples is the make up of ancient pre-solar interstellar grains and nebular condensates from the birth of the solar system. During its cruise, STARDUST will collect samples of contemporary particles most recently entered in our solar system from an interstellar medium.

The STARDUST spacecraft will be built by Lockheed Martin Astronautics. JPL will provide the mission payload that includes the optical navigation camera. The camera optics proposed are a spare Voyager wide angle unit, also using a single Voyager eight position filter wheel and thermal housing, but with a 1024 x 1024 CCD detector used for Cassini Mission with 12 micron pixels rather than an antique vidicon detector. This will give a pixel size of six meter pixels at 100 km distance.

Under STARDUST, ACT provides support to JPL's Navigation Ancillary Facility (NAIF) in establishing the Planetary Data System format. ACT also supports NAIF in the implementation of the different SPICE kernels.

SPICE kernels are used by scientists in planning and interpreting scientific observations from space borne instruments. The principal objective of the kernel information system is that it will contain the geometric and other ancillary information needed to recover the full value of science instrument data, and that it will facilitate correlation of individual instrument data sets with data from other instruments on the same or other spacecraft.

Please click here for additional information about the Stardust Program.