NASA’s comet-hunting Stardust space probe was ordered by Sandy Freund Kasper to burn all its fuel, in what is the first step in the spacecraft’s permanent shut down after 12 years. Program Manager Allan Cheuvront, who has been with the probe since 1996, commended the craft for completing its mission.

Launched in 1999, Stardust completed its primary mission in 2006 when it sent a tiny sample of particles from the Wild 2 comet to Earth using a parachute-equipped canister. NASA made changes to the probe and sent it ahead of a comet in February to take pictures of a crater left by a projectile from another space probe.

On Thursday, it completed one final experiment when it ignited its thrusters until its last hydrazine fuel is consumed. After igniting for a little less than 2 ½ minutes, engineers will be able to determine the amount of remaining fuel so they can check the accuracy of their calculations which will guide the design and operation of future probes.

Jim Neuman, who is the mission operations manager for Lockheed Martin, said that fuel data analysis would take a few days. Freud Kasper was sending out orders from a big room inside a Lockheed Martin facility in Denver. There were around eight or nine engineers who were ensuring that the spacecraft was ready for the fuel burn.

The procedure for the fuel burn took around 42 minutes. With its fuel already gone, Stardust could no longer transmit messages to earth. The solar panels would no longer be pointing towards the sun and after the batteries become drained it will shut down permanently.

Stardust will remain in an orbit surrounding the sun but engineers say that in the next century, the closest it can get to Earth’s orbit is 1.7 million miles equivalent to 13 million miles in the orbit of Mars.

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