We sang our spacecraft to sleep today with a melody of digital ones and zeros. Stardust has performed flawlessly these last seven years and 2.88 billion miles, and deserves a rest for a while, like the rest of the team.
We took a spacecraft and flew it five years. But in these five years, we went back to the origin of time - to the origin of our solar system.
We are totally prepared, both for if everything goes perfectly and if the spacecraft acts up a little bit.
This spacecraft is a comet explorer. It has the tools to do a lot more.