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STARDUST Name Campaign Zooms Past One Million Mark



MEDIA RELATIONS OFFICE
JET PROPULSION LABORATORY
CALIFORNIA INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY
NATIONAL AERONAUTICS AND SPACE ADMINISTRATION
PASADENA, CALIF. 91109. TELEPHONE (818) 354-5011
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov

Contact:  Jane Platt

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE						August 6, 1998

STARDUST NAME CAMPAIGN ZOOMS PAST ONE MILLION MARK

More than one million people have signed up to have their names
electronically engraved on the second of two microchips that will fly
aboard NASA's Stardust spacecraft.  Stardust is scheduled for launch on a
round-trip journey to a comet next February.

The one-millionth signature was received Wednesday, August 6, at 5:49 p.m.
Pacific Daylight Time. The first microchip, which contained 136,000 names
collected last fall, has already been installed on the spacecraft, which is
being assembled at Lockheed Martin Astronautics, Denver, CO. The "Send Your
Name to a Comet" effort is being coordinated by NASA's Jet Propulsion
Laboratory and the National Space Society. 

Names may be submitted only electronically, either on the Stardust web site
at http://stardust.jpl.nasa.gov or the National Space Society website at
http://www.nss.org/impact  .  Deadline is August 15, 1998.  Those
submitting their names are granting permission for the Stardust project and
its partners to use the names submitted in possible future exhibits and/or
publications. 

Stardust will fly within about 160 kilometers (100 miles) of the nucleus of
the comet Wild 2 (pronounced vilt-2).  It will capture a sample of comet
dust for return to Earth in 2006, and collect nearly 100 high-resolution
pictures of the comet's surface.  The mission, managed by JPL for NASA's
Office of Space Science, is a collaborative partnership between the
University of Washington, Lockheed Martin Astronautics and JPL/Caltech.
Stardust was selected under NASA's Discovery program of low-cost solar
system projects.  The California Institute of Technology manages JPL for NASA.

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