Aug 5 2002
From The Space Library
Lockheed Martin, NASA, and the state of Mississippi opened the Lockheed Martin Mississippi Space and Technology Center at NASA's SSC. Officials planned for the 220,000-square-foot (20,440-square-meter) facility to commence operations by the end of 2002. Lockheed Martin announced that its new facility would include a center for production of propulsion and thermal systems for spacecraft, as well as an integrated metrology center. The company also announced that it would provide engineering and manufacturing services at the facility. Lockheed Martin officials cited the location of NASA's Center of Excellence for propulsion testing at SSC as a critical factor in their decision to consolidate the company's capabilities at the single facility. (Lockheed Martin, “Lockheed Martin Mississippi Space and Technology Center Opens Doors at John C. Stennis Space Center, MS,” news release, 5 August 2002, http://www.lockheedmartin.com/news/press_releases/2002/LockheedMartinMississippiSpaceTechn.html (accessed 28 January 2010).)
NASA announced that its Stardust spacecraft had begun collecting interstellar dust grains~extremely small particles of solid matter that permeate the Milky Way Galaxy, providing clues to the galaxy's formation and development. For use in comparative analyses, the spacecraft would collect both ancient dust grains, found in the interior of comets, and relatively young dust particles, produced by the current generation of stars. Stardust would encounter comet Wild 2 in early 2004. Project scientists, who planned to analyze the dust grains after the spacecraft's scheduled return to Earth in 2006, hoped that their study would yield evidence about the composition of the early galaxy and its subsequent evolutionary changes. (NASA JPL, “Stardust Spacecraft Reaches for Cosmic Dust,” news release, 6 August 2002.)
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