NASA'S VENERABLE COMET HUNTER WRAPS UP MISSION

At 33 minutes after 4 p.m. PDT today, NASA's Stardust spacecraft finished its last transmission to Earth. The transmission came on the heels of the venerable spacecraft's final rocket burn, which was designed to provide insight into how much fuel remained aboard after its encounter with comet Tempel 1 in February.

"Stardust has been teaching us about our solar system since it was launched in 1999," said Stardust-NExT project manager Tim Larson from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. "It makes sense that its very last moments would be providing us with data we can use to plan deep space mission operations in the future."

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