STARDUST - FINESSING EXPENSIVE COMETARY SAMPLE RETURNS

The STARDUST Discovery mission will collect samples of cometary coma a nd interstellar dust and return them to Earth. Five years after launch in February 1999, coma dust in the 1- to 100-mu m size range will be captured by impact into ultra-low-density silica aerogel during a 6 km s(-1) flyby of Comet Wild 2. The returned samples will be investigated at laboratories where the most critical information on these primitiv e materials is retained. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory will provide pr oject management with Lockheed Martin Astronautics as the spacecraft i ndustrial partner. STARDUST management will aggressively and innovativ ely achieve cost control through the use of Total Quality Management p rinciples, the chief of which will be organization in a Project Engine ering and Integration Team that ''flattens'' the traditional hierarchi cal structure by including all project elements from the beginning, in a concurrent engineering framework focusing on evolving Integrated Mi ssion Capability. Copyright (C) 1997 Elsevier Science Ltd.