Friday, March 25, 2011

Comet-hunting spacecraft shuts down after 12 years

NASA ordered its comet-hunting Stardust probe to burn its remaining fuel on March 24, setting off a sequence that shut down the spacecraft after a 12-year career.

Stardust had finished its main mission in 2006, sending particles from a comet to Earth. It took on another job last month, photographing a crater on an asteroid.

It accomplished one last experiment on Thursday, firing its thrusters until its last hydrazine fuel was gone. The length of that burn, a little under 2 1/2 minutes, will tell engineers exactly how much fuel was left so they can see how accurate their calculations were.

That in turn will help with the design and operation of future probes.

Spacecraft don’t carry fuel gauges because they don’t work in zero gravity.

It will take a few days to analyze the fuel data, said Jim Neuman, a mission operations manager for Lockheed Martin, which built and operated the probe at its complex south of Denver.

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