Artist's concept of NASA's Stardust during its comet rendezvous. Photo: NASA

The first two parts of the three-step Deep Space Maneuver-1 (DSM-1), to target the Stardust spacecraft for an Earth gravity assist next year, have been successfully completed.

The Flight Team at Lockheed Martin has verified that the spacecraft performance was even better than predicted and that these two maneuvers had less than 1-sigma execution errors.

JPL Navigation is making detailed assessments of these maneuvers in preparation for the third and final maneuver to complete Deep Space Maneuver-1 this weekend.

NASA's Stardust spacecraft was launched in February atop a Boeing Delta 2 rocket to begin a seven-year, 3-billion mile journey to capture samples of a comet for return to Earth.