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The NASA Stardust spacecraft, which will collect dust from Comet Wild-2 in January 2004, will practice its fly-by manoeuvres tomorrow on Asteroid AnneFrank. Stardust will encounter the asteroid at 04.50 GMT on Nov 2 and will, at its closest, be 3,220 km from AnneFrank and travelling at a speed of 6 km/s. During the fly-by Stardust will run through the tasks planned for the comet encounter to test its science instruments for the first time since the space probe's launch. "Ideally, everything will work, but my guess is we'll have some lessons learned and then we'll have over a year to fix it before we get to Comet Wild-2," said Stardust mission director Tom Duxbury.
The encounter with AnneFrank will provide images of the asteroid although these will not be high resolution. Dr Don Brownlee, Stardust's prinicipal investigator from the University of Washington explains, “"This is a great opportunity for us. It's like a dress rehearsal for a wedding. You expect everything to go as planned, but just in case you'd like to know ahead of time."
Stardust is due to return to Earth in 2006 with a precious cargo of dust particles from Comet Wild-2 and also dust from beyond our Solar System which it has already been collecting. The dust particles will allow scientists to investigate the origins of comets in detail and will be made available for study by scientists around the world.
More info: Stardust website
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