NASA's Stardust-NExT mission took this image of comet Tempel 1 at 8:39 p.m. PST
(11:39 p.m. EST) on Feb 14, 2011. The comet was first visited by
NASA's Deep Impact mission in 2005.

Stardust-NExT is a low-cost mission that will expand the investigation of comet Tempel 1
initiated by NASA's Deep Impact spacecraft. JPL, a division of the California Institute
of Technology in Pasadena, manages Stardust-NExT for the NASA Science Mission Directorate,
Washington, D.C. Joe Veverka of Cornell University, Ithaca, N.Y., is the mission's
principal investigator. Lockheed Martin Space Systems, Denver, built the spacecraft and
manages day-to-day mission operations.

For more information about Stardust-NExT, please visit http://stardustnext.jpl.nasa.gov.

Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Cornell