> > Hi Ron and List, > > It's sad to the see the old girl go. On it's current course, where > will the craft go? I am assuming out of the solar system and into > interstellar space, but will it head towards a specific star or just > out into "empty" space? >
It is very sad. I've worked on Stardust for 11 years. The spacecraft will remain in orbit around the Sun. Tim Larson: "When we take into account all the possibilities for how long the burn could be and then the possible post-burn trajectories, we project that over the next 100 years, Stardust will not get any closer than 1.7 million miles of Earth's orbit, or within 13 million miles of Mars orbit," said Larson. "That is far enough from protected targets to meet all of NASA's Planetary Protection directives. " Ron Baalke ______________________________________________ Visit the Archives at http://www.meteoritecentral.com/mailing-list-archives.html Meteorite-list mailing list [email protected] http://six.pairlist.net/mailman/listinfo/meteorite-list
