Stardust / Stardust-NExT
NASA's Stardust Discovery mission collected particles from comet Wild 2 and interstellar space, returned them to Earth in 2006, and reused the surviving spacecraft for the Stardust-NExT flyby of comet Tempel 1 in 2011.
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Identity
- Aliases
- StardustStardust-NExTNew Exploration of Tempel 1
- Name
- Stardust / Stardust-NExT
- Status
- completed
Details
- Astronauts
- -
- Description
- NASA's Stardust Discovery mission collected particles from comet Wild 2 and interstellar space, returned them to Earth in 2006, and reused the surviving spacecraft for the Stardust-NExT flyby of comet Tempel 1 in 2011.
- Destination
- Heliocentric trajectory to comet Wild 2 and later Tempel 1, with an asteroid Annefrank flyby, interstellar and comet dust sample return to Earth, and the Stardust-NExT comet revisit
- End Date
- 2011-03-24
- Landing Facility
- Launch Site
- Outcome
- Success. Stardust became the first mission to return samples from a comet and the first NASA mission to return particles from beyond the Earth-Moon orbit. Its capsule delivered more than 10,000 Wild 2 particles larger than one micrometre, and the surviving spacecraft later completed the first revisit of a comet during the Stardust-NExT Tempel 1 flyby.
- Programs
- Start Date
- 1999-02-07
- Vehicle Families
Links
- Official Url
- https://science.nasa.gov/mission/stardust/
Assets & Meta
- Creation Time
- July 16, 2026 at 23:46:45 UTC
- Updated Time
- August 22, 2026 at 15:11:36 UTC
- Image
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Other
- Affiliations
- Search Name
- Stardust / Stardust-NExT Stardust Stardust-NExT New Exploration of Tempel 1
- Space Stations
- -
- Vehicles