NASA issues new assignments to spacecraft

WASHINGTON, July 9 (UPI) -- The National Aeronautics and Space Administration has assigned two spacecraft new roles in observing comets and characterizing extrasolar planets.

The NASA spacecraft -- called Stardust and Deep Impact -- will use their flight-proven hardware to perform new, previously unplanned, investigations, officials said

"These mission extensions are as exciting as it gets," said Alan Stern, associate administrator of NASA's Science Mission Directorate. "They will allow us to revisit a comet for the first time, add another to the list of comets explored and make a search for small planets around stars with known large planets.

"And by using existing spacecraft in flight, we can accomplish all of this for only about 15 percent of the cost of starting a new mission from scratch," added Stern.

The Deep Impact spacecraft, launched Jan. 12, 2005, impacted Comet Tempel 1 on July 4, 2005, creating a crater that is still being studied. Stardust, launched in 1999, traveled more than 2 billion miles to the comet Wild 2. A container with comet samples returned to Earth in January 2006, while the rest of the spacecraft remained in space.