Stardust-NExT Spaceflight
Stardust-NExT Spaceflight
This Demonstration shows an animation of the flight of the Stardust-NExT spacecraft's mission to two comets (81P/Wild 2 and 9P/Tempel 1). The spacecraft used a technique called gravitational assist twice with the Earth, on January 15, 2001 and on January 14, 2009. It also studied the asteroid 5535 Annefrank (closest approach occured on November 02, 2002).
NExT stands for New Exploration of comet Tempel 1.
The orbits of planets have the following colors: Mercury: orange; Venus: brown; Earth: blue; Mars: red; Jupiter: brown. The orbit of the comet Wild 2 is purple, the orbit of the comet Tempel 1 is white (or black, depending on the background color), and the orbit of the asteroid Annefrank is pink.