The Stardust spacecraft will take advantage of flying near a small asteroid next month to test many procedures it will use 14 months later during its encounter with comet Wild-2.

Stardust will pass within about 3,000 kilometers (about 1,900 miles) of asteroid Annefrank at 8:50 p.m. Nov. 1, Pacific Standard Time. The spacecraft will automatically image Annefrank using camera tracking of the mountain-sized rock as it speeds by at 7 kilometers (4 miles) per second.

"This is an engineering test," said Thomas Duxbury, project manager for Stardust at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif. "We have no science goals or science expectations at Annefrank. It's an opportunity to try key procedures for the first time before we get to comet Wild-2. We may identify problems that we can address before we reach our primary target."

Stardust will bring samples of comet dust back to Earth in 2006 to help answer fundamental questions about the origins of the solar system. Click here to learn more about the upcoming flyby and the Stardust mission.

Go to 2002 News Articles Archive