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Send Your Name To A Comet On the STARDUST Spacecraft



                   Send Your Name on a Journey to a Comet aboard the
                                  Stardust Spacecraft

                  The Planetary Society helped NASA's Jet Propulsion
                  Laboratory put nearly 600,000 names on the Cassini
                  spacecraft, and now the Society is helping JPL put
                  names on another historic spacecraft. When the
                  Stardust mission launches in February 1999, it
                  will carry the names of thousands of Planetary
                  Society members and other space exploration
                  supporters. And, if you act before November 30,
                  1997, your name can also be on this
                  comet-exploring spacecraft.

                  Working with the Stardust Project, the Planetary
                  Society is collecting names to be placed on a
                  microchip that will be mounted on the Stardust
                  return capsule. This capsule is part of a
                  spacecraft that will be rocketed into the tail of
                  comet P/Wild-2, collect samples of the comet's
                  tail, and then return to Earth in January 2006.

                  To join Stardust on its journey, send your name,
                  address, city, state, country, postal code, and
                  age (optional) to:

                       Stardust
                       The Planetary Society
                       65 North Catalina Avenue
                       Pasadena, CA 91106-2301

                  All entries must be received no later than Sunday,
                  November 30, 1997. The Society will also be
                  posting a form for members and others to submit
                  their names on this web site.

                  We Are Stardust

                  Stardust will be not only the first United States
                  mission solely dedicated to a comet but also the
                  first robotic return of cometary dust and volatile
                  samples. The culmination of more than a decade's
                  quest for a comet sample return, this mission will
                  help us understand more about the formation of our
                  solar system, since comets are well-preserved
                  relics of the preplanetary material that accreted
                  in the outer fringes of the solar nebula. The
                  scientific value of having comet samples in hand
                  cannot be overestimated.

                  Scientists consider comet P/Wild-2 to be a "fresh"
                  comet. In 1974, it was deflected by Jupiter's
                  gravitational action from an earlier orbit much
                  farther out in the solar system. Samples from
                  Wild-2 thus offer us an exciting glimpse of the
                  best preserved fundamental building blocks out of
                  which our solar system formed. And sample
                  collection will make use of exciting new aerogel
                  material, the lowest density solid material on
                  Earth.

                  Fortuitously, a rare but opportune orbital design
                  using an Earth gravity assist allows Stardust to
                  capture cometary dust intact -- and parent
                  volatiles as well -- at the incredibly low
                  relative speed of 6.1 kilometers (about 4 miles)
                  per second. With the aid of onboard optical
                  navigation, the flyby can take place at an
                  encounter distance as close as 50 kilometers (31
                  miles) from the comet's nucleus, permitting the
                  capture of the freshest samples from within the
                  coma parent molecule zone. This rare trajectory
                  imposes a very low post-launch fuel requirement
                  and enables launch by a Delta 2 launch vehicle.

                  As an exciting bonus, Stardust will also collect
                  interstellar dust, recently discovered by Ulysses
                  and confirmed by the Galileo mission. In addition,
                  a particle impact mass spectrometer provided by
                  Germany's DLR will obtain in-flight data on the
                  compositon of both cometary and interstellar dust,
                  especially the very fine particles.

                  Increasing the yield of science data, Stardust's
                  optical navigation will take images of the comet's
                  nucleus. The spacecraft's dust shield will also
                  provide coma dust spatial and temporal
                  distribution, and the X-band transponder may
                  provide an estimate of comet Wild-2's mass.

                  You can get more information on this mission to
                  comet Wild-2 at the Stardust Project's web site:

                  http://stardust.jpl.nasa.gov/